UXmatters has published 147 articles on the topic Usability Testing.
Metrics are the signals that show whether your UX strategy is working. Using metrics is key to tracking changes over time, benchmarking against iterations of your own site or application or those of competitors, and setting targets.
Although most organizations are tracking metrics like conversion rate or engagement time, often they do not tie these metrics back to design decisions. The reason? Their metrics are too high level. A change in your conversion rate could relate to a design change, a promotion, or something that a competitor has done. Time on site could mean anything. Read More
UX researchers and other project stakeholders often fervently debate the number of participants that are necessary for usability studies. At the core of this debate is often the tension between the usability professional’s desire for the best possible study and the business team's desire to reduce time and expense.
In 2009, Ritch wrote an article for the Journal of Usability Studies titled “How to Specify the Participant Group Size for Usability Studies: A Practitioner’s Guide” to address this issue. He based his article on a wide survey of the literature then available, and his intent was to help usability professionals make clear recommendations for the size of participant groups in particular contexts, as well as to understand the basis for those recommendations and their associated risks. Read More
Has your boss or a client ever asked you to review a user interface for a Web or desktop application? Perhaps the request went something like this: Can you just look over these new screens for us? Oh, and can you check the error messages, too? It won’t take long! And, by the way, we ship next month. Whether you are an interaction designer, usability professional, technical communicator, quality assurance engineer, or developer, reviewing a user interface typically means identifying