Running Your First Usability Test

A practical guide to your first usability test
You've heard how important usability testing is, and now you want to learn how to do it. This tutorial takes you through the details of planning a usability test, with an optional half day to run a practice session, with review and feedback on how it went.

“ Many thanks for all the input and hands-on testing ”

Outline of the Course

1. Planning a test – defining the questions the usability test will answer

2. Selecting test materials – making the decision about using a paper or online prototype, and how complete it needs to be for an effective test

3. Recruiting users – writing a recruiting questionnaire to be sure you get the right people

4. Choosing tasks – planning the tasks that users will complete during the test

5. Structuring the session – organizing the flow of the session and planning the moderator’s session guide, with good questions to help elicit more information from users

6. Taking notes – planning note-taking to make effective use of test observers

   (Optional half-day)

7. Running a pilot test – run several sessions of the test, with review and feedback to improve the test plan and facilitation techniques.

This course can also be combined with the half-day Interviewing Skills for Usability Testing