Here’s a step by step list of how you can successfully carry out user tests on a budget and achieve great results.

Example of case study

• Usability test start off with user being asked to find individual item..
• The user/tester is normally paid for this, a real user would not take as much time to look for item.

The Comparison of costs betweeen traditional and remote testing:

• Traditional – testing lab required, specialist equipment, travel costs, user incentives.
• Remote tests – online meeting, recruitment, user incentives, better on budget.

1. Remote testing overview:

Start of defining objectives and target audience:

• What

• who are you testing?
• what are you testing?

• How

• ask your company, meet marketing and devs
• ask your users – survey, interviews

• Outcome

• Informal test mission and objectives
• Common understanding, test direction and scope

2. Set up scenario

• On a budget it’s best to be performed online – online meeting and screen, capture and phone.

> Go to meeting, webex (meet people online)
> Camtasia, ZDsoft > screeen/video capture

• What

• representative tasks
• within time linits and user capabilities
• in line with test objectives

• How

• consult with project stakeholders and objectives
• develop sample app and html instructions (walkthru of task you want user to perform)
• run dry test with home users
• apply changes

3. Recruit testers

• define user profile and user criteria (1hr of time reqd)
• decide on incentive (cash)
• set up recruitment survey
• select recruitment channels- Online (community, classified, job ad), traditional (newspapers, ads), recrutiment agency
  - All link to survey to see how suitable candidate is for study

• contact all shortlisted users, provide survey with available timeslots

4. Carry out test

• Set up software and phone conference
• Send invitations to project stakeholders in advance
• Be punctual

5. During the test

• Confirm user profile
• Ask for permission to record session
• Limit moderator intrusion
• Encourage thinking aloud
• Deliver incentive/payment
• Have fun

6. Analyse results

• During tests – track all usability issues
• Have more than one person taking notes
• After each test, compare notes and analyze
• After all tests, summarise patterns and major problems
• Setup report and sample vidoes

7. Design report and brief stakeholders

• communicate results to stakeholders > product managers, design managers, etc.
• so that everyone views and absorbs the information from the results.

Final Notes

• Don’t test same person more than twice a year, dont over use them as they may become biased as to what you are looking for
• If have to retest, use different group, best to have oversubscribed group of about 50 people to use if need to retest
• Ideal number of users? account for 5 people > the ratio between quality and costs, unless retesting another 2-3.. have about 20 applicants if want enough users for each study.

These are notes from the Original presentation at WebDD by Telerik.

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