EffectiveUsabilityTesting

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International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering

Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459,ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 3, Issue 1, January 2013)

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Effective Usability Testing – Knowledge of User Centered Design is a

Key Requirement

Venkataramesh Sripathi

1

, Veerabhadraiah Sandru

2

1

Tata Consultancy Services Limited Kohinoor Park, Plot No.1, Jubilee Gardens, Hyderabad -500081, AP, India 2_{Tata Consultancy Services Limited, Deccan Park, Hi-Tech City, Madhapur, Hyderabad – 500081} Abstract- User-centered design (UCD) is a type of user

interface design approach and a process in which the needs, wants, and limitations of end users of a product are given extensive attention at each stage of the design process.1

Impact of effective user centered design is clearly evident in the current ongoing phenomenon of rapid Smartphone and Mobile App adoption. Smartphone are rapidly becoming the primary method of interaction for consumers and businesses worldwide. The explosion of consumer apps can be seen in just about every industry. By 2015, International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts that 182.7 billion mobile apps will be downloaded. That’s a 1600% increase from the 10.7 billion apps downloaded in 20102.

This paper offers a brief summary of few key User Centered Design approaches as they would provide good foundation for an effective usability testing. Along with this, this paper provides details about various usability test aspects that can be performed on a web site along with listing of few tools that could help in those aspects.

Keywords- User Centered Design, Usability Testing, Usability Testing Tools

I. INTRODUCTION

Today’s customers are looking forward more actively towards a Very engaging, Customer-friendly & easy-to-use design environment.

It is estimated that high amount of capital is invested by IT Organizations worldwide in Training and support costs, Documentation costs, Development time and costs, Maintenance costs etc.

A good user centered design based software application can help companies to get the benefits in the below aspects:  Reduce maintenance costs

 Increased overall User satisfaction  Increased sales and revenues  Delivers Positive Brand Image  Decreased training and support costs

Studies by Forrester Research 2001 estimate that approximately 50 percent of potential sales are lost because users can’t find information and that 40 percent of users do not return to a site because of the navigation issues10

As software has become an intrinsic part of our every day life, a defect in User Interface can also cause severe problems as witnessed in recent examples4

 Jakob Nielsen's Alert box, May 23, 2011 mentions that though iPad apps are much improved, but new usability problems have emerged, such as swipe ambiguity and navigation overload.

 Air France's Airbus A320 crashed on January 20th, 1992. The same button was used for 2 different functions (speed and angle of descent). 87 people died11

 The USS Vincennes Shot Down a Civilian Plane Because of Bad Cursors

 Three Mile Island Happened Because of a Light on the Console

 Air Inter Flight 148 Crashed Because a Display Screen Was Too Small

 The Herald of Free Enterprise Capsized Because of an Open Door

 The Kegworth Air Disaster Happened Because of a Digital Dial

As systems become more complex and interdependent, development and quality efforts are further complicated.

Some of the usability issues observed are listed below:  Bad design – (Missing of standard code techniques ,

Complexity , Error Handling etc)

 less efficient hardware or technology that slows the processing of information which in turn leads to difficulty in Learning

 Difficulty in Navigation

 Insufficient Content and functionality  Inefficient task flows

 Poor page layouts



Unclear language etc.

With the above facts and requirements insight, User Centered Design has become an important aspect as it provides top down approach for creating the applications from users needs. Below are the typical key tenants in the user centered design:

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 Identify and Involve Users in all the Stages of the

Software development life cycle  Understand & analyze the User needs

 Use the standard code techniques & methods to evaluate the design

 Allow participants to evaluate and review the process they just finished

Next section describes User Centered Design in detail. II. WHAT IS USER CENTERED DESIGN?

User-centered design (UCD) is an approach to user interface design and development that involves users throughout the application design and development process. It not only focuses on understanding the users of a computer system under development but also requires an understanding of the tasks that users will perform with the system and of the environment (organizational, social, and physical) in which they will use the system.

User Centered Design is distinguished by a few common practices: user studies, user feedback, and user testing6. It seeks to understand users as thoroughly as practical. A. User Centered Design Approach

The approach is mainly focused on users through the planning, Early & Midpoint in the design and final stage of the design cycle. Below diagram indicates the key phases of User Centered Design Approach.

Figure 1: User Centered Design Approach

Identify the Target Users:

This stage introduces participants to the concept that there are different types of users which have various characteristics and that in order to design a good application, It is important to recognize the target users.These characteristics include Name, Age range, Location, Social life, Socioeconomic status, Job title, Work life, Internet/computer use, Time at a computer per day.

Analyze the User needs:

Qualitative and quantitative techniques19 to analyze users needs.

Quantitative techniques (e.g., post surveys, recording procedures, think alouds, debriefing, etc) allow you to count the frequency of user behavior, such as the number (or percentage) of errors that occur on tasks and the number of users who successfully perform tasks etc.,

Qualitative techniques are like navigation clarity, Text density etc.

Design the system:

With the information gathered in the previous sections, participants design low fidelity prototypes5. Prototypes are group of techniques used to present in a short time a graphical concept of project. It is (or at least should be) used at the beginning of the design process.

And low fidelity prototypes may be a sketch on a piece of paper (paper prototyping) or a picture made by an application.

Evaluate the system:

The final stage is designed to allow participants to evaluate and review the process they just completed B. User Centered Design Approach Techniques

Below are the key User Centered Design Approaches that can be of use in various phases of User Centered Design.

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Table I:

User Centered Design Techniques20

Techniques Purpose Stage

Card sorting A way to involve users in grouping information for a Web site

Early and mid-point in the design Interviews &

Questionnaires

Collecting data related to the needs and expectations of users; evaluation of design

alternatives, prototypes and the final artifact

beginning of the design

Focus groups Include a wide range of stakeholders to discuss issues and requirements Early in the design Sequence of work interviews and questionnaires

Collecting data related to the sequence of work to be performed with the artifact

Early in the design Personas A collection of realistic

representative information which includes fictitious details for a more accurate

characterization Early in the design Role Playing, walkthroughs, and simulations Evaluation of alternative designs and gaining additional information about user needs and expectations; prototype evaluation

Early in the design

Usability Testing

Collecting quantitative data related to measurable usability criteria

Final stage of the design Interviews and

questionnaires

Collecting qualitative data related to user satisfaction with the artifact

Final stage of the design

III. KEY USER CENTERED DESIGN TECHNIQUES

Below few are the key techniques that can involve users at different stages of the software development process. A. Back ground interviews & Questionnaires:

This technique can be used in beginning of the design. Interview is a method intended for discovering facts and opinions held by possible users of the system being designed. It is typically done by one interviewer talking to one participant at a time. Reports of interviews have to be carefully analyzed and targeted to make sure they make their impact. Questionnaires23 are a means of asking users for their responses to a pre-defined set of questions and it is a good way of generating statistical data.

Interviews & Questionnaires enable designers to evaluate the users’ likes and dislikes about the design and to gain a deeper understanding of any problems (Shneiderman, 1998, p. 131)

Figure 3: Interviews & Questionnaire

B. Heuristic evaluation15

This technique can be used in the Analysis and Testing stage. It mainly talks about Usability Check for computer software that helps to recognize Usability problems in the User Interface (UI) design and it involves evaluators examining the interface and judging its compliance with recognized usability principles.

It mainly involves a small set of evaluators (One to three) and they independently examine a UI and judge its compliance with a set of Usability principles. The outcome of this analysis is a list of potential usability issues or problems. This technique provides rapid and somewhat inexpensive feedback to designers and this can be obtained early in the design process.

Jacob Nielsen, an author, researcher, and consultant on user interfaces – In 1994 evaluating quite a number of heuristics and came up with a better set

o Visibility of system status - The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time Ex: If the system status takes a long time to load a screen, display a progress bar and/or an estimate of the time it may take to load, so users know what to expect

o Match between system and the real world - The system should speak the user’s language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms.

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Follow real-world conventions, making

information appear in a natural and logical order Ex: while designing a website for children, use terms with which they are familiar and display information in formats they are used to seeing o User control and freedom - Users often choose

system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked "emergency exit" to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue. Support undo and redo.Ex: Provide the functionality to Undo and Redo actions and to easily exit the system

o Consistency and standards - Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. Follow platform conventions Ex: Use icons with which people are familiar, rather than creating new designs that mean the same thing.

o Error prevention - Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place. Either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action Ex: : If a user cancels her account, offer her a way to re-establish the account within a certain time period

o Recognition rather than recall - Minimize the user's memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate Ex: On a web form, allow easy access to previously entered information, such as serial numbers, so the user does not need to recall the information or write it down

o Flexibility and efficiency of use - Accelerators -- unseen by the novice user -- may often speed up the interaction for the expert user such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions. Ex: An accelerator can be a keystroke shortcut, such as Macintosh’s Command+Q to quit an application.

o Aesthetic and minimalist design - Dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility. Ex: Background graphics can make viewing text difficult

o Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors - Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes), precisely indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution Ex: If the user enters an invalid email address on a web form that requests the address, the error message could read, ―That email address is not in our records. Please enter an email address in this format: email@address.com

o Help and documentation - Even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation, it may be necessary to provide help and documentation. Any such information should be easy to search, focused on the user's task, list concrete steps to be carried out, and not be too large

C. Personas

Personas9 are nothing but customer type or fictitious characters to represent the different user types within a targeted demographic group that might use a site or product. It acts as stand-ins for real users. It can have multiple User Profiles to explain his/her interaction with the outlined system. The main goal is to help the product teams better understand the users and thus improve their products.

Figure 4: Personas

A user persona is a representation of the goals and behavior of a hypothesized group of users. In most cases, personas are synthesized from data collected from interviews with users. They are captured in 1–2 page descriptions that include behavior patterns, goals, skills, attitudes, and environment, with a few fictional personal details to make the persona a realistic character. For each product, more than one persona is usually created, but one persona should always be the primary focus for the design.

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It has been used as part of a user-centered design process for designing software and are also considered a part of interaction design (IxD).

D. Card sorting

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This technique can be used early and mid-point in the design cycle. Sorting is usually used as an input to design. It's an excellent way of suggesting good categories for a site's content and deriving its information architecture. Card sorting is a way to involve users in grouping information for a Web site. It helps you build the structure for your Web site; decide what to put on the home page.. Participants in a card sorting session are asked to organize the content from your Web site in a way that makes sense to them. It can be used to generate statistical data.

Figure 5: Card Sorting

Typical process of card sorting is mentioned below  Getting the cards ready

o List the most key topics or types of information that you are likely to have on the site

o The Topics or content information is like what your site offers to your users

o Write each topic on a separate index card o Bound yourself to 100 cards or less

o Have empty cards available for participants to add topics and to name the groups they make when they sort the cards

o Number the cards in the bottom corner or on the back

 Arranging cards for sorting sessions

o Plan about 1 hour for each session – longer if you have many cards

o Arrange for a space where the participant has enough room to spread the cards out on a table

 Sorting session

o Show the participant the set of cards and explain that you are asking for help to find what categories of information should be on the site's home page and what those categories should be called o Let the participant work. Also, let the participant

add cards

o At the end, if the participant has too many groups for the home page, ask if some of the groups could be combined for the home page

 Analyzing Data

o Use the numbers on the cards to quickly record what that participant has done

o If you want a complete picture of the detailed site map each user has created, create a computer file for each session

o For a less detailed analysis, use your notes and recordings of the participants' names and card numbers under each person's name to find commonalities from different sessions

o For a more detailed analysis, consider using an Excel spreadsheet to show the relationship between the cards or use one of the available software programs to analyze your data

o After you analyze the data from card sorting, you should have useful information for structuring your Web site

o You should use the results of your card sort to help you Define the Navigation of your Web site o Next, you must create good content by Writing for

the Web  Writing for the Web

o Content selection – logical information is the significant component of a useful website

o Organize page content and write visually – short sentences , limit paragraphs , use bulleted lists , use tables to make complex information , use headings and subheadings etc

o Write clearly – present the main message first, use words that are familiar to your readers. Give examples because user love examples and will often read them instead of the text

III. USABILITY TESTING

This technique can be used in the Final stage of the design cycle. Usability is all about people, not products.

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It is the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals‖, and recommends evaluating usability in terms of measures of effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in a specified context of use ―- The International Standards Organization ISO 9241-11. It is the measurement of the usability of a product or service. Below is the process of usability testing.

Figure 6: Usability Testing Steps

Start the usability testing with the proper plan in determining the Target Audience, Time frame. Create the Realistic scenarios which are as real as the real user. To meet your users’ needs, it is essential to know your audience and to design for them. Recruit people who will actually be using your designs, such as your customers.

To conduct the Usability Test, Book the required rooms, Video tapping equipment & A List of Tasks together with criteria for measuring whether they have been successfully completed, Logging sheets to record timing, events, participants actions, comments, post evaluation questionnaire to measure user satisfaction. Once we are done with the usability test, determine cause of problems, scope/severity of problems. After analyzing the data, Create & Present the Usability Test Report which contains Test Results, findings and recommendations and conclusion and finally see how many of those suggestions agreed upon have actually been incorporated. Using data conclude whether those suggestions did or did not improve the usability of your product.

A. Usability Testing Metrics

There are several Usability Testing Metrics depending on the Quality Models. However most of the models include the below common attributes.

 Efficiency & Effectiveness in Use  Learnability – Time to Learn  Rememberability - Memorability  Reliability in Use – Errors / Safety

 User Satisfaction - Comfort and acceptability of use

Figure 7: Usability Attributes as defined by various standards/experts21

B. Key Usability Testing Aspects

There are several usability test aspects in case of web site testing3.

1).User Task Analysis: The most important and obvious thing to test for is whether users are able to accomplish their tasks and goals when they come to your site. Not only that, you have to ensure they're able to do so in the best and most efficient way possible.

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Perform a task analysis for each task. Evaluate task performance under these considerations:

 Learnability: How easy is it for new users to learn to perform the task?

 Intuitiveness : How obvious and easy is the task to accomplish?

 Preciseness: How prone to errors is the task? What are the reasons for any errors? How can we improve the interface to lower errors and unneeded repetition?  Fault Tolerance: If a user makes a mistake while

performing the task, how fast can he recover?  Memorability: How easy is the task to repeat? Tools in this category:

 IntuitionHQ  Usabilla  Loop11  FiveSecondTest

2) Readability: Content is at the heart of any type of website. For example, even in web apps — which aren't typically as content-centric as, say, a blog or web magazine — not being able to read and understand the user interface is a hindrance to one's ability to perform tasks efficiently and accurately.

Readability hinges on these considerations:

 Ease of Comprehension: Is the content easy to understand and internalize? Are the words being used familiar to the average Internet user or are they too complex and uncommon? Are sentences and paragraphs as concise as possible?

 Legibility: Are fonts big enough? Is there enough contrast between the text and its background?

 Reading Enjoyment: Would users appreciate and enjoy the content? Is the information accurate, of high quality and well-written? Do font characteristics such as size, spacing and color make reading longer passages easy or do they strain the eyes?

Tools in this category:

 Juicy studio: Readability test  WordsCount

 Check my colours

3). Site Navigability: For most sites, it's imperative that the user be able to move through multiple web pages as easily as possible. Navigability consists of numerous user interface components, such as navigation menus, search boxes, links within the copy of a webpage, sidebar widgets that display recent or top content and so on.

Here are the major considerations for when you're testing your site's navigability:

Information Architecture (IA): How well are Web pages categorized and organized? How well are navigational features constructed?

Findability: Are there sufficient site features such as search boxes, archive pages, links and navigation features that aid in finding relevant webpages

Efficiency of Navigation: How fast and in how many actions (number of clicks, how much text, etc.) does it take to get to page of interest?

Tools in this category:  Websort.net  Optimal sort  Treejack  Writemaps  Plainframe  Navflow

4.) Accessibility: A website should be accessible to everyone, including those of us with disabilities that affect how we experience the web.

When evaluating a website's accessibility, it's important to look at it from a universal design point of view. People often mistake web accessibility as being only for those with barriers like blindness or mobility issues. However, we should broaden our view to include anything that might hinder a user accessing your site from a number of browsing situations. This is especially critical with the rapid adoption of mobile devices, tablets, netbooks and web-enabled TVs and gaming consoles. Internet users also have a much wider array of web browsers than ever before: IE, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera and so forth.

All of these options render our work in different ways and present interaction challenges. For example, selecting a link on a touch screen tablet is completely different from clicking it on a desktop computer.

The general goal of evaluating a site's web accessibility is how well it deals with these varying circumstances.

Here are considerations to take into account when performing web accessibility analysis:

 Cross-Browser/Cross-Platform Compatibility: Does the site work in as many browsing situations as possible? Is the site responsive, flexibly changing the layout depending on how the user views it?

 Semantic HTML Markup: Especially for those who use assistive technologies like a screen reader, the quality and accuracy of the webpage's structure is important. Are HTML tags being used correctly?

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 Color Choice: Are the colors used high contrast? Do

the colors create a hindrance to people will colorblindness or poor vision?

 Use of HTML Accessibility Features: There are HTML features and techniques that aid users with visual impairments. Are these features and techniques being used?

Tools in this category:  Juicy Studio; Local Tools  VisCheck

 W3C Markup Validation service  WebAnywhere

 Browsershots

5). Website Speed: One factor of usability that's not completely evident is the need for a website to be speedy and responsive. In fact, web users deeply care about how fast they're able to get the information they need. The better performing a website is, the more efficient a user will be when completing his desired tasks.

Here are considerations for evaluating the speed of a website:

 Webpage Response Time: How fast (in units of time, such as milliseconds) does it take to load an entire webpage?

 Webpage Size: How big is the webpage, in terms of file size?

Tools in this category:  Pingdom Tools  Page Speed Online

6). User Experience: User experience (UX), at its core, tries to study and evaluate how pleasant a website is to use. This factor is largely subjective because it deals with user perception, which can be vastly different from one user to the next.

The way UX can be evaluated is through user feedback. By asking questions of users, you can gain a better understanding of how they feel about the site.

Some considerations when evaluating UX:

 Fulfillment: Do users feel satisfied after interacting with the website?

 Usefulness: Does the user feel like he's obtained value from using the website?

 Enjoyment: Is the experience of being on the website fun and not burdensome?

 Positive Emotions: Do users feel happy, excited, pleased, etc. when they interact with the site?

When evaluating user experience, a qualitative approach is often the only option. We can't accurately quantify such subjective things as feelings and emotions.

Through the use of web design feedback tools and surveying tools, we can gain some insights into how users feel.

Tools in this category:  Feedback Army  UserVoice

IV. CONCLUSIONS

 User-centered design (UCD) is a type of user interface design approach and a process in which the needs, wants, and limitations of end users of a product are given extensive attention at each stage of the design process.

 Applications that are designed following UCD could result in following Benefits

o Saves Time and Money

 Reduced development time and costs  Reduced maintenance costs

o Increased sales and revenues o Decreased training and support costs o Increased customer satisfaction o Increased overall User satisfaction o Delivers Positive Brand Image

 There are several techniques available to help on UCD and some of them could be deployed in the three phases of UCD namely Analyze, Design and Test.



Website Usability Testing has multiple aspects to verify namely User Task Analysis, Readability, Site Navigability, Accessibility, Website speed and User Experience. Each aspect has multiple considerations to verify. There are several tools that could help on this. REFERENCES

[1 ] User Centered Design: Click Here

[2 ] The Essential Guide to Mobile App Testing – Click here

[3 ] 22 Essential Tools for Testing Your Website's Usability. Click Here [4 ] 6 Disasters Caused by Poorly Designed User Interfaces. Click Here [5 ] Low fidelity prototyping – Click Here

[6 ] h Beyond user centered Design and User Experience – Click Here [7 ] Introducing User Centered Design – Click Here

[8 ] The 13 Most popular methods for user centered design – Click here User Centered Design - Click Here

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[9 ] Glossary – Persona – Click Here - Wikipedia - Persona – Click Here [10 ] - Usability Gov site – Click Here

[11 ] Usability Success stories – Click here –

[12 ] Human computer interaction – Encyclopedia – Click Here [13 ] Slide share

http://www.slideshare.net/deepikashanti/12-software-maintenance

[14 ] Software Maintenance – Click Here [15 ] Heuristic Evaluation – Click Here

[16 ] The Do’s & Don’ts of website Navigation Usability – Click Here [17 ] Usability Disasters – Click Here

[18 ] Introducing User Interface Design – Click Here

[19 ] Qualitative and quantitative techniques of user needs – Click Here [20 ] User Centered Design Article – Click Here

[21 ] Usability Measurement & Metrics – Click Here [22 ] Definition of Usability – Click Here

[23 ] UCD 6 Methods – Click Here

[24 ] User Centered Design Approach diagram – Click Here [25 ] Card Sorting Diagram – Click Here

[26 ] Personas Diagram – Click Here [27 ] Interviews Diagram – Click Here [28 ] Questionnaire Diagram – Click Here [29 ] Usability Testing Process – Click Here

First Author

Venkataramesh Sripathi has 8 years of experience in software testing. Currently he is Module Test Lead for Regression Testing in HiTech Industry Solution Unit of Tata Consultancy Services. In this role, he is responsible for leading the team, Understanding the Business Requirements, Test Design, Test Execution, Reporting & Test Metrics. He is certified in ISTQB, Oracle. He has been part of several best practices and initiatives throughout his testing career including knowledge enhancements across the assurance accounts. Venkata Ramesh has expertise in Test process, design, Test management, automation & ERP Testing.

Second Author

Sandru Veerabhadraiah has 16 years of experience in IT and 8 years of experience in software testing. He has masters degree in engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. He has certifications in ISTQB-Foundation and TOGAF-ISTQB-Foundation. He had earlier published 2 white papers in TCS’s Global Technical Architects conference. He also published white papers on testing in QAI, IJCEM and recently conducted a 2 hour tutorial on Transaction Based Pricing at STEP-IN’s Hyderabad Software Testing Conference. Currently he is leading the Assurance CoE of HiTech Industry Solution unit of Tata Consultancy Services. His area of expertise include test process consulting, test.