Talk:Usability testing

Definition used
This is a rather idealized definition that does not take into account the broad diversity of what people do under the label of "usability testing". In my experience, "usability testing" is a label for a very large number of different techniques for assessing a product. Even with this narrow definition, there's strong evidence that usability testing practices are so diverse that they aren't comparable, or at least not to the point where it is meaningful to discuss topics such as the appropriate number of test participants. Certainly, most "usability tests" are not controlled experiments. -- Ronz 15:31, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Promotional External Links
Some of the external links are barely more than self-promotion. I decided to leave them all, but move the less informative, more promotional ones to the end. (Ronz 14:10, 31 May 2006 (UTC))
 * I'm for removing all the external links, adding internal references, and see how the self-promoters respond. Wikipedia:External Links Guide --Ronz 14:52, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Removed everything that didn't fit the External Links Guide. --Ronz 19:04, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

List of things to test
I moved this from the article because its not encyclopedic and from my perspective misses what usability testing is all about. Originally contributed by Vmahi9 on 23 November 2006:

Here we check the user friendlyness of the application. There are several sub tests to be followed:

1. User Interface Testing a. Look and Feel of the objects b. Alignments c. Spell checks d. Error messages etc. 2. Manual support Testing a. User Manuals/User Guides.

--Ronz 17:41, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Opinion about designers
Although usability may be hurt by design decisions there is no evidence that shows they are contradictory. And there is no evidence about designers focusing more on "cool" things than usability. (Mdediana 18:34, 11 January 2007 (UTC))

Agreed. Although the statement may or may not be true, it doesn't really belong in this article. If it was intended to be there as a reason to do usability testing, it is only one of many reasons. JayKinnis 04:27, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Also Agree..pretty biased as is. Usability can conversely be hurt by developers/engineers and management overly concerned on product functionality and adding features without promoting usability. Because they understand their own designs and the technology they are often ignorant to the fact that average users will not be able to utilize their designs. If a section is to be added concerning detriments to good usability this angle needs to be included as well. 20seven  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.100.104.17 (talk) 22:31, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

I really think that usability testing includes testing how the user uses the manual because in my experience the manual is a part of the product. Without it, the user can't easily accomplish tasks without some period of self-teaching (time consuming). How well was it written? Was the way the information was presented handled by the user? Did the user use the manual at all? How does the user use the manual to find the information he/she is looking for? What about online help? Context sensitive? This is all a part of usability testing, in my opinion.

In addition, I think feedback on error messages that occur is very important. How many times have you received an error in windows that just said "An Error Occurred" without any additional information on how to resolve it or even what caused it.

If your look and feel is clunky, it is going to affect your users ability to use the software, won't it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 152.133.15.64 (talk • contribs)

Usability testing versus usability inspection
Donmillion (talk) 16:54, 23 February 2009 (UTC) Usability testing is a technique used to evaluate a product by testing it on users. This can be seen as an irreplaceable usability practice, since it gives direct input on how real users use the system.[1] This is in contrast with usability inspection methods where experts use different methods to evaluate a user interface without involving users.

The first sentence seems to describe User Acceptance Testing - which can of course include usability testing, but is not the same thing AS usability testing.

The second sentence says that usability testing is essential to usability. Fair enough, but is it necessary to say so?

The third sentence is contentious: who says that users are not permitted in a usability inspection? I would certainly want to include them!

A better opening might be:

"Usability" concerns the ease with which users can undertake and complete tasks via some product (such as a software system), and the degree of satisfaction they experience in doing so. Usability can be measured by various parameters, such as time taken to complete tasks, frequency of consulting "help" resources, frequency of user errors while executing tasks, and subjective measures of satisfaction. Some aspects of usability can be assessed by non-dynamic methods (reviews), but others require active use of the product by representative end users.

Donmillion (talk) 16:54, 23 February 2009 (UTC) Donmillion

Since we're distinguishing (rightly) between usability testing and usability inspection, why do we have "Expert review" and "Automated expert review" sections on this page? They should be on the usability inspection page.

Jkshapiro (talk) 18:57, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Claims about "first use of usability testing"
The people from Intuit may think they were the first people to do usability testing in 1984 but it's patently not true. I set up a human factors laboratory to do this at Digital Equipment in the UK in 1983, and that in turn was modelled on a lab that was set up by Bill Zimmer and John Whiteside at Digital's Spitbrook facility in New Hampshire. There's even a paper by John Whiteside, Dennis Wixon and others on how people use text editors, based on usability testing, that was published in 1982. That was just what was going on in Digital Equipment; when you take into account all the work that was done at PARC, at IBM and other places, I think one can conclude that the Intuit claim is entirely bogus and doesn't really deserve to be in here.

DrJohnBrooke (talk) 15:17, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

That plot?
Isn't that Excel(?) plot rather awful? Using lines instead of dots (or other markers) imo indicates a rather unscientific approach... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.115.114.42 (talk) 15:03, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

References Broken, Duplicated, with no Authors/Titles
References 2 - 7, 11, & 13 need to have Titles and Authors preceding the URLs, as in references 9 & 10. Some of the URLs do not lead to the specific source being referenced (#2), some are duplicated (#'s 7 & 11), and some lead to sites that require membership (#13). Below is an updated list of those references, with Authors and Titles listed should the URLs cease to function.

2. ^ Baecker, Ronald M. (March 2008)TIMELINES: Themes in the early history of HCI---some unanswered questions

3. ^ Veitch, Martin (April, 1997) Intuit's Scott Cook on users, usability and MS

4. ^ Jerz, Dennis G. (April, 2011) Usability Testing: What Is It?

5. ^ Nielsen, Jakob (March, 2000) Why You Only Need to Test with 5 Users

6. ^ Andreasen, Morten Sieker; Villemann Nielsen, Henrik; Ormholt Schrøder Jan Stage, Simon (2007) What happened to remote usability testing?: an empirical study of three methods

7. ^ ** Duplicate of reference 9. Remote possibilities?: international usability testing at a distance

8. ^ Gough, Dabney; Phillips, Holly (June, 2003) Remote Online Usability Testing: Why, How, and When to Use It

11. ^ ** Duplicate of reference 5. Why You Only Need to Test with 5 Users

13. ^ Spool, Jared; Schroeder, Will (2001) Testing Web Sites: Five Users Is Nowhere Near Enough — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.254.70.240 (talk) 14:51, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

More modern examples
Seems the examples of this article are outdated (1982!) it would be great to have more recent examples. (Mulut2017 (talk) 02:00, 11 March 2017 (UTC))
 * I agree that more and contemporary examples would improve the article, but to add a comment: the 1982 Apple design guideline is old, but not outdated. Usability testing, and human-centered design more broadly speaking, is an approach and a process that ought to apply to systems design in general. The fact that it applied to interface design in 1982 and continues to do so in 2017 is pertinent to the article. For this reason, I would not recommend removing the example simply because it is old, though, again, I do see the value of additional contemporary examples. Radiotradition (talk) 16:20, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

vs UX testing
UX testing redirects here but is not mentioned at all in article. And opinions how "usability testing" and "UX testing" relate to each other are not entirely clear. Maybe mention this name at all in the page text? Mateusz Konieczny (talk) 08:18, 18 October 2021 (UTC)