Talk:Usability testing

This is a rather idealized definition that does not take into account the broad diversity of what people do under the label of "usability testing". In my experience, "usability testing" is a label for a very large number of different techniques for assessing a product. Even with this narrow definition, there's strong evidence that usability testing practices are so diverse that they aren't comparable, or at least not to the point where it is meaningful to discuss topics such as the proper number of test participants. Certainly, most "usability tests" are not controlled experiments. -- Ronz 15:31, 28 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Promotional External Links

Some of the external links are barely more than self-promotion. I decided to leave them all, but move the less informative, more promotional ones to the end. (Ronz 14:10, 31 May 2006 (UTC))[reply]

I'm for removing all the external links, adding internal references, and see how the self-promoters respond. Wikipedia:External Links Guide --Ronz 14:52, 7 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Removed everything that didn't fit the External Links Guide. --Ronz 19:04, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

List of things to test

I moved this from the article because its not encyclopedic and from my perspective misses what usability testing is all about.
Originally contributed by Vmahi9 on 23 November 2006:

Here we check the user friendlyness of the application. There are several sub tests to be followed:

1. User Interface Testing
   a. Look and Feel of the objects
   b. Alignments
   c. Spell checks
   d. Error messages etc.
2. Manual support Testing
   a. User Manuals/User Guides.

--Ronz 17:41, 23 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Opinion about designers

Although usability may be hurt by design decisions there is no evidence that shows they are contradictory. And there is no evidence about designers focusing more on "cool" things than usability. (Mdediana 18:34, 11 January 2007 (UTC))[reply]

Agreed. Although the statement may or may not be true, it doesn't really belong in this article. If it was intended to be there as a reason to do usability testing, it is only one of many reasons. JayKinnis 04:27, 18 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I really think that usability testing includes testing how the user uses the manual because in my experience the manual is a part of the product. Without it, the user can't easily accomplish tasks without some period of self-teaching (time consuming). How well was it written? Was the way the information was presented handled by the user? Did the user use the manual at all? How does the user use the manual to find the information he/she is looking for? What about online help? Context sensitive? This is all a part of usability testing, in my opinion.

In addition, I think feedback on error messages that occur is very important. How many times have you received an error in windows that just said "An Error Occurred" without any additional information on how to resolve it or even what caused it.

If your look and feel is clunky, it is going to affect your users ability to use the software, won't it?