Usability studies.

September 26, 2002 | 0 Comments

This week I’ve been doing some “guerilla” usability studies over at the hospital. Pretty much what that means is I’ve just been grabbing people, almost at random, and sitting with them watching, taking notes and discussing their experience as they use one of our Intranet sites.

It’s been an eye opening process, and I’ve only done a few. I’ve gotten some really good information. Frankly, I thought I’d get some, but I had no clue I’d get so much good stuff so easily.

On past gigs I’ve been involved with quite a bit of very sort-of, formalized user testing, and lots of group usability studies, for a few different kinds of sites. I’ve read reports and watched users go through scripts. I’ve observed focus groups and seen benchmarking studies done. I have to say that this one-on-one study has given me at least as much good information, especially when all the observations are looked at together.

Some of this might be because of the types of users we have, and the type of content we deliver, I’m not sure. One thing I can tell you is that our content itself is much more a barrier to good usability than the interface or design, at least in most people’s eyes so far. Something I thought, but hadn’t actually seen. I was able to pick up quite a few things from these studies, things I can implement right away and things that will have an impact on future design goals.

I guess - as Christian, pointed out to me - Steve Krug was right when he said, “testing one user is 100% better than testing none.” You really can get useful information with just a few willing users, an open mind and some free time. You don’t even need the 10 cents. Side note: I found a nice interview with Steve Krug over at Studiowhiz.

Filed under: IA and Usability