Usability testing techniques, what is available and are they worth it?
For the longest time, designers and developers have been going to extraordinary lengths in order to get into the heads of their users. The web community has evolved to an extent that there are now many weird and wonderful methods for finding out more about its users online experiences. These methods range from the straight-forward and sensible to the outlandish and expensive.
Eye-tracking technology
Using eye-tracking technology to assess the usability of websites is a relatively young method of usability testing that is only going to get more popular as the required camera technology becomes more affordable. Special cameras are able to track exactly where a user is looking on screen and which areas grab the user’s attention. Usability testing using this technology usually involves asking test subjects to perform simple tasks on a website and then tracking their eye movements to assess how easy it was for them to complete the task. If the task takes longer than expected and the user spends time searching the screen for what they are looking for then it usually means that the design needs adjusting accordingly.
A recent example of this kind of testing was a study into the effectiveness of several online banking websites conducted by Tobii. The control group were asked to perform a series of tasks (e.g. sign up for online banking) and then asked how easy or difficult they found the task. This kind of testing provides a useful indicator of how users naturally view web pages and would be invaluable for e-commerce websites.
Heat-maps
Heat-maps are a similar concept to eye-tracking, however they focus purely on mouse location / clicks and the aim is to produce a colour coded ‘heat map’ showing where the user hovered their mouse over the longest and what they clicked on. This can be useful for establishing what caught the user’s attention but perhaps not as fair a representation of the users experience as you might get with eye-tracking.
In addition to these kind of heat-maps, there is software available that allows you to track a user’s facial expression as well as their mouse movements, allowing for an insight into the users emotional response when testing.
A/B testing
A/B testing (also referred to as split testing or bucket testing) involves showing different versions of a landing page to a controlled number of users and seeing which one gets the higher positive response / conversion rate. For example if you were sending out an e-mail campaign you might have two subtly different versions (such as a differently worded headline or call to action) of the e-mail and send them to an equal number of people and see which one produces the higher conversion rate.
This kind of testing highlights how important this kind of testing is when something as subtle as the wrong font colour can turn users off to whatever messages you are promoting.
Card sorting
Card sorting is a type of usability testing that can be useful for simplifying complex navigation structures, among other things. It works by presenting a control group (often divided into teams) with cards that have each of the key navigational items written on them and asking them to organise them into a structure that makes sense to them. Then once the data has been collected from all of the test groups, a clustering algorithm can then be used to establish the most logical / commonly suggested navigational structure. This kind of testing is useful because a navigational structure that makes sense to person A won’t necessarily make sense to person B.
To conclude, I think that user experience and usability testing is extremely important, but it is equally important to know which areas require it and what kind of testing approach to take. I look forward to seeing how the usability testing world evolves; it would not surprise me if the next trend in usability testing involves hooking up users to a heart monitor in a bid to gauge their emotional response to a website.
