Category: Blog
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Usability testing in the wild – ballots
I’ve been busy the last few weeks doing some of the most challenging usability testing I’ve ever done. There were three locations where I did day-long test sessions. But that wasn’t the challenging part. The adventure came in testing ballots for the November election. What was wild about it? This series of tests came together…
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Retrospective review and memory
One of my favorite radio programs (though I listen to it as a podcast) is Radiolab, “ a show about science,” which is a production of WNYC hosted by Robert Krulwich and Jad Abmurad and distributed by NPR. This show contemplates lots of interesting things from reason versus logic in decision making to laughter to…
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Getting ready for sessions: Don’t forget…
There are a bunch of things to do to get ready for any test besides designing the test and recruiting participants. make sure you know the design well enough to know what should happen as the participant uses it copy any materials you need for taking notes copy of all the forms and questionnaires for…
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Where usability testing fits into your research strategy
What, you don’t have a research strategy? Let’s think about the future here. It’s not uncommon – and not bad – to be working in the present, reacting to the ever-growing demand for usability testing in your organization. “Ever-growing” is good. But when Jared Spool asked me to do a podcast with him recently to…
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Usability testing and democracy: evaluating ballot designs makes the headlines
Today the Brennan Center for Justice at the law school at NYU released a major report about the impact of poor ballot designs and unclear instructions on voters and the importance of usability testing. Among the highlights is an overview of the Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA) usability testing kit for local election officials (the LEO…
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Stop writing reports
I’ve had a few questions from readers lately about standardizing reports of usability test results. Why is there no report template in the Handbook? There’s no “template” for a final report because I think you probably shouldn’t be writing reports. Or at least written reports should be minimal. Mini.mal. Though the outline should basically be…
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Making it easy to collect the data you want to collect
As I have said before, taking notes is rife with danger. It’s so tempting to just write down everything that happens. But you probably can’t deal with all that data. First, it’s just too much. Second, it’s not organized. Let’s look at an example research question: Do people make more errors on one version of…
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Translating research questions to data
There’s an art to asking a question and then coming up with a way to answer it. I find myself asking, What do you want to find out? The next question is How do we know what the answer is? Maybe the easiest thing is to take you through an example. Forming the right question…
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Data collecting: Tips and tricks for taking notes
A common mistake people make when they’re new to conducting usability tests is taking verbatim notes. Note taking for summative tests can be pretty straightforward. For those you should have benchmark data that you’re comparing against or at least clear success criteria. In that case, data collecting could (and probably should) be done mostly by the…
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The importance of rehearsal
You have designed a study. Everyone seems to be buying in. Scheduling participants is working out and the mix looks good. What’s left to be done except just doing the sessions? Three things: Practice. Practice. Practice. There are three rounds of practice that I do before I do a “real” session. Jeez, I can hear…