The Importance Of Usability Testing

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1. Introduction Usability testing is essential for all user-centered design. It is a technique which is used to evaluate the usability of a product by collection empirical data. There are different kinds of test methods and each one has its own advantage and disadvantage. Usability testing focuses on real users which are carefully chosen. These people are representatives for a specific user group and they are ask to perform tasks that are realistic but in a controlled environment. In contrary to usability testing is usability inspection where only experts evaluate the design. In my research I will focus on the reliability of usability tests by inspecting the possibility of influencing or manipulating the test user, the objectivity of the test…show more content…
Usability testing The reason why usability tests are so important in a user-centered design is not only a happy customer as a result of an intuitive and easy to use product, but also economical benefits are important in this context. A product that works fine does not need much customer support and people are eager to purchase an object that delights. Usability tests are about establishing a scenario which is realistic but in an artificial environment. The user who is chosen for the test (described in chapter “ Test candidates”), performs tasks on a test object while he/she is observed by a test leader or -team. There are no other methods as usability method that includes representative end user and which also provides empirical data (Gould & Lewis, 1985). According to Lewis (Lewis, 2006), usability test is the most important and most widely applied method. This can be attributed to the many benefits that the usability method brings with. For instance, usability testing mineralized cost and risk, increase sale and customer brand loyalty. It also keeps down development cost, user support cost, cost of unscheduled updates and in the worst case, product recalls (see e.g. Jordan, 1998a; Nielsen, 1993) 4.1 Usability test…show more content…
Especially the presence of one or more observers results to increase of user arousal (Geen, 1991). This can be measured by parameters such as heart rate validation (HRV) which is related to emotional arousal. For instance, when a person feels acute time pressure, emotional strain or anxiety, the hart frequency decreases (Wikipedia, 2014). 6. Conclusion We have learned that user scenarios cannot be simulated exactly as a real life situation in a usability test. For this reason it is important that usability practitioners realize what it means to make test scenarios simple and abstract. Furthermore, important issues are several influencing factors that can have an effect of the test results. If practitioners are not aware of the limitations of usability test method the data gain from the test may not be reliable and whole test result may become

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