Usability Testing

What it is

Usability testing is watching people attempt tasks on your design and recording where it breaks. It is an activity, distinct from usability, which is the quality the design has. The sessions are short, the participants are few, and the output is a ranked list of findings rather than a score.

Why it matters

Everything else in this topic produces opinions about a design; a usability test produces an observation. That difference settles arguments: the debate about whether a label is clear ends the first time two participants misread it. It is also cheap at the right moment — five people, one afternoon, no working code — and its findings are the most actionable in design, because they name a specific element and a specific failure.

In this track

1. Running the session (03-design-ux/33-usability-testing/01-running-the-session) — writing tasks, moderating without helping and capturing think-aloud.
2. Analysis and severity (03-design-ux/33-usability-testing/02-analysis-and-severity) — turning notes into findings and deciding what to fix first.

Prerequisites

• Usability (03-design-ux/11-usability)

Go deeper

• Usability (03-design-ux/11-usability) — read this first; the quality this activity is trying to discover.
• Heuristic Evaluation (03-design-ux/34-heuristic-evaluation) — the expert pass that complements a session.
• Prototyping (03-design-ux/40-prototyping) — the artefact most sessions are run against.
• Maze (03-design-ux/43-maze) — the unmoderated variant, and what it costs to run a session without a moderator.