Usability Methods
Getting to know your users may be the most important thing you ever do for your online business. There are many methods for evaluating usability, and each has its place.
This section provides an overview of the most common usability evaluation methods used in software design today, and provides guidance on how to stitch these methods together into a cohesive User Centered Design (UCD) program.
- Card Sorting
Card sorting is a useful tool to determine how users categorize the information that will appear on a website.
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- Charrettes
A charrette is an intense generative exercise that takes place over multiple days, and involves a multi-disciplinary group of participants.
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- Cognitive Walkthroughs
To determine the level of usability for a website, one or more usability experts “walk” through a set of the most typical user tasks supported by the website, one-step-at-a-time.
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- Contextual Task Analysis
A contextual task analysis, or contextual inquiry, is a user research method that applies ethnographic observation and one-on-one interviewing to understand the task procedures that users follow to reach their goals.
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- Facilitated Brainstorming
Most people have heard of brainstorming, and probably been involved in some type of brainstorming exercise; however, facilitated brainstorming is much different than simply gathering in a small group and sharing ideas.
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- Focus Groups
Focus groups are best utilized as an evaluative tool, rather than a generative one (such as Facilitate Brainstorming and Charrettes). A Moderator facilitates a small group of 4 to 8 participants, by showing them or demonstrating a product or concept.
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- Heuristic Evaluation
A Heuristic Evaluation, or Usability Audit, is an evaluation of an interface by one or more Human Factors experts.
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- One-on-One Interviews
Structured, one-on-one interviews help researchers learn about users’ attitudes and beliefs surrounding a website or application, and specific tasks that it supports.
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- Participatory Design
Participatory design exercises engage stakeholders and end users in the process of solving a design problem.
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- Surveys
Surveys are a good way to collect quantitative data for user opinions about an application or website.
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- Usability Testing
In order to conduct a usability test, you must first identify the target audience, which will consist of one or more user groups.
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- Quality Assurance Testing
From our perspective, quality assurance is a subset of the overall usability goal—after all, a website isn’t usable if it isn’t working.
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- HCI Design Approaches
Eberts (1994) [1] describes four Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) design approaches which may be applied to user interface designs to develop user-friendly, efficient, and intuitive user experiences for humans.
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