The usability of a product or service is a key part of the user-centered design process. It shows where things can be improved and helps an improvement figure out how well a solution meets user needs. Usability testing and other types of empirical research lead to ideas that come straight from how users act and what they say. During a usability test, users interact with a solution and complete test activities while a facilitator watches and writes down what they do. In addition to what is often thought of as a purely qualitative task, it is possible to record, evaluate, and synthesize quantitative measures.
Metrics Of Usability Testing
Metrics Of Usability Testing are explained here.
1. Usability Metric: Number Of Errors
This is another good thing about usability testing. This effectiveness indicator counts the number of wrong user actions or anything else that keeps a user from finishing a job. It might be difficult to say what an error is. Usually, we talk about errors like choosing the wrong menu option or accidentally clicking on the wrong link that is close to the right one. Even though everyone makes mistakes, if we find spikes in certain jobs, we can figure out how to improve the design to eliminate these error-prone situations. When showing the results of an error report, we can show the number of errors, the error rates by the user, by task, or as an average for all users and tasks.
2. Task Success: Usability Metric
Task success, or how well users can do a task, is a way to measure how effective something is. For example, suppose users need help understanding how a solution works, what steps to take, and how to comprehend it from the beginning to the end. In that case, this indicates that the tested solution’s usability is relatively easy. In addition, there are multiple metrics to measure the success of a task. This is another good thing about usability testing. On the other hand, Binary task success only checks to see whether or not the task was done.
As you can see below, we can use a chart to show the data broken down by user or the overall job completion rates of the test subjects. For example, the above visualization shows that each user only finished tasks 1 and 5 correctly. In addition, only half of the users could complete challenge number four.
Based on these results, the solution doesn’t help people reach their goals in the best way possible. Task 4 asks you to look at what users did, what they said, and what got in their way so they couldn’t do what they wanted. In a test, levels of task success can be set up so that the results and insights are more in-depth. Use, for example, a four-level scale to show whether a task was done well, poorly, or with a minor, major, or no problems. Determine if user behavior fits into each stage, especially if more than one person looks at the test results.
3. Usability Metric: Total User Action
This measure shows how well something works. How much work will users do to reach their goals or complete their test tasks? As a general rule, usability and user experience are better when there is less work. The effort can be measured by the number of activities that can be seen that users do on their way to getting a job done. We know the total number of actions that need to be taken. When users take a lot more steps than they need to or when some users take a lot more steps than others, it means that our solution could be helping these customers better. Results can be shown for each task, for all tasks, and for all users or users. This is another good thing about usability testing.
4. Number Of Help Requests: Usability Metric
Metrics for the number of help requests and errors are close. This statistic shows how sure users are when doing tasks. When a user asks, “I think I should click here now, right?” or “What should I do now?” they get stuck on their journey. The answer needs to be changed because it needs to say more about itself to suggest the next step. We can chart this variable the same way we did for the number of errors.
5. Learnability: Usability Metric
“Learnability” is a special feature of Time on Task. When we repeatedly tell test participants the same instructions, we can see how much faster they can complete tasks. Depending on what we’re looking at, the time between trials can be anywhere from a few minutes to a few days or weeks.
6. Time On Task: Usability Metric
The time it takes to finish a task is another way to figure out how much work it takes. By keeping track of when a task starts and ends, we can compare how much time is spent between tasks and users. If some users complete longer to finish their tasks than others, we can look into which features of the solution didn’t help them as much as they needed to. Remember that the time should not be taken to indicate how long a user would need to finish the assignment in the real world. Instead, we encourage users to take a moment to explain their thoughts and actions during the test.
7. Usability Metric: Contentment
The results can then be shown in a chart like the one below for each task, all tasks, each user, and all users: Any solution used to complete a job that people aren’t happy with is ready for improvement. This is another good thing about usability testing.
Charts Like The One Below Show Us What Happened:
By signing up for a free CMSWire subscription, you accept our privacy statement and agree to be contacted by CMSWire staff. Here, we can see that after three trials, the time it takes to finish a task often goes down. This is likely to happen. But the drop in learnability was bigger for some things than for others. What gives?
What Features Of The Solution Make It Hard For Users To Comprehend And Remember Instructions?
As was already said, what matters is the difference between the trials, not the actual time in seconds. This is because test participants are asked to talk about their actions and thoughts as they go, which makes the task execution times longer. Any other metrics listed above can be used to measure learnability. Similarly, as long as their values are collected over several trials. If the learning effect is strong, the task of successful tasks, the number of errors, the number of requests for help, and the number of user actions should all go up.
Taking Action Based On The Results Of Usability Testing
1 – Now that we have a set of measurements, what do we do with them?
2 – They can explain to stakeholders how different aspects of UX and usability work.
3 – But remember that user experience is more than the sum of these metrics.
4 – They can also be used to find problems with a solution and suggest how to fix them.
5 – We can also use the test results to track how well our solution works over time:
6 – Do these numbers change between releases, or do they even go down? Or are we getting better?
7 – They can be used to evaluate our competitors’ solutions and our own goals and benchmarks.
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