Usability Research, What’s It All About? And How Can It Make You Money?

So by now you’ve probably heard of usability research and all the wonderful things it can do for you. But what is it really all about? And how do you translate all of the data from the research into more money for your business?

What Is Usability Research?

Usability research can be conducted on almost anything but in in the web world it is most often used for websites, software, or apps. Conducting usability testing ensures that the end product provides the customer with a satisfying and positive experience. Usability research is an important step in bridging the gap between you and your customers. 

       “A bad web site is like a grumpy salesperson.”

                – Jakob Nielsen, Web Usability Guru

There are four main steps involved in conducting usability research

• Competitive Analysis
  
• Heuristics
  
• Card Sorting
  
• Usability Testing

Each step plays an important part in gather and implementing vital information to make your product more effective.

Competitive Analysis

A competitive analysis is conducted to review other websites or products that are similar to your own. This is done to see what is already out there in the market and to evaluate the positives and negatives of the organization and design of these sites or products.

Overviewing other sites or products can help you avoid costly pitfalls and help to ensure you have the best site in the business.

Heuristics

If the client has an existing site heuristics analysis involves an overview of the working components of the site such as error control and handling. An overview of the site is conducted to test each component a customer may interact with. This helps to catch places where opportunities are being lost or where customers may be getting frustrated and annoyed. As you can imagine an annoyed customer soon turns an ex-customer. It is important for a site to be easy to use and understand.

Card Sorting

Card sorting helps us to better organize the pages of the site and how they connect. It involves evaluating the current site structure and creating a new and more effective structure. 

Site page names are either written on cards or entered into a card sorting software and users are asked to group the pages together under headings that they create. This process allowed us to better understand the user’s point of view when it comes to organization and navigation.

Usability Testing

And finally, usability testing, which involves getting real live people to use and test the site and give their feedback. Participants are gathered and asked to complete various tasks on the website while using the 'think aloud protocol.' The 'think aloud protocol' encourages participants to explain their feelings and through processes out loud while they are attempting to complete the given task. This is helps the tester more fully understand any issues the participant may have while testing the site.

So How Does Usability Research Make My Company Money?

Usability research can positively impact your company’s revenue by ensuring your customers are happy and satisfied. Giving extra attention to the needs and preferences of the customer will strengthen the relationship and create positive results. 

      “For each dollar a company invests in developing the usability
       of a product, the company receives $10-$100 in benefits and
       wins customer satisfaction and continued business.
       Furthermore, industry data shows that for each dollar spent
       to fix a problem during product design, $10 are spent to fix
       the same problem in product development, and $100 or more are
       spent to fix the same problem after product release.”

                 – Claire Marie Karat, “A business case approach
                   to usability cost justification.” In, R. Bias
                   and D. Mayhew, Eds. Cost-Justifying Usability,
                   Academic Press, NY, 1994.

I don’t know about you but saving and making money sure sounds good to me! Conducting usability research is a great way to strengthen your product and positive relationships with your customers. A happy customer is a good customer!

Participating in a Usability Study!

This week I participated in a usability study for a local company in downtown Seattle. I’m not going to write the specifics of the company or of the product I tested because I’m not sure what the legal president is here, but I do want to write a little about my experience as a first time usability test subject in the real world.

I have participated in a usability study done by my peers, and ran my own study for the same class, but those experiences were all in the confines of the classroom. It was exciting and informative to be part of a usability test run by a company that is fine tuning their products. The people involved in the test were myself, the woman running the test, and a videographer who took care of the video and sound. We were all crammed into a very tiny cozy room with the woman and myself seated at a desk and the videographer off to the side so he could get a good shot of me using the computer and later the phone. I got to test the product on a desktop and an app version and I actually ended up liking the app version better which is kind of a surprise because I don’t really use apps all that much.

One thing that really stands out to me about usability testing is the delicate line the tester has to walk when interacting with the participant in order to gather data on a specific element. You don’t want to ask leading questions or give away the answers but at the same time you won’t be able to gather data if the participant is unable to find/do something that you are testing. There was one particular action in this test that I just couldn’t figure out how to do and the tester ended up having me try to accomplish the task by guiding me to several different starting points. In the end I never figured out how to accomplish the task and even though this is great feedback for the test I still felt a little dumb. But then again that is the whole point of usability testing; to see how your users are actually going to use, or fail to use, the product.

A nice part about actually sitting in a room with the person who is testing your product is getting to use the think aloud protocol. The think aloud protocol is pretty much what it sounds like, you have the participant explain their thought process and feelings out loud as they are attempting to complete tasks. This is especially helpful if the process is going to be videotaped, then both the participant and the tester can focus on the task at hand and not have to worry as much about remembering details for later.

I find that I often have helpful insights while in the moment, but when looking back on an experience later I will lose all but one or two. After the fact written feedback from me would not be as useful as just letting me ramble as I’m trying to accomplish a task. Very often I find that I have ideas that are completely unrelated to the subject at hand but that are ultimately useful when considering the product as a whole. In fact, I ended up giving more feedback about things that were not present in the app than the elements that were.

I quite enjoyed my first experience participating in a usability test and I am looking forward to being able to participate in more. Hopefully someday soon I’ll be able have a job running my own tests!