Fundamentally, usability is concerned with making systems easy to learn and easy to use. Usability is a key component of a system’s total delivered value; it should be obvious to the end user how to navigate the system.

Usability testing can provide the single largest return on investment in the design process. It can be used to assess a system during development, or it can be used to compare performance against the competition.

A usability test is typically the first point in the design process that a website or product is exposed to real users. It is the point at which the intent of the designer first meets the expectation of the user. Actual or potential users and customers are put into real-life scenarios in which they are given real goals to accomplish. If there are problems with a product or website the test participant will find them. Furthermore, the test captures what the users actually do, not just what they say they might do. And one thing is certain – users will do things that you never expected.

A typical user-interface can have anywhere from 50 to 100 usability problems. A usability test will uncover 95% or more of these problems for a moderate investment.

We strongly urge a number of small scale rapid usability tests to be conducted from the outset of design. Catching problems very early enables low cost fixes to be implemented and enables designers to change direction in midstream with low risk. Catching problems late or, worse still, catching them after product launch, can result in dramatic costs and sometimes irreversible consequences.

We offer a number of different usability testing services including:

• Heuristic Analysis
• User Interviews
• Ethnographic Studies
• Quantitative & Qualitative Research
• Focus Groups
• User Surveys & Questionnaires
• Usability Lab Testing