Posted Jan 02,2012 by 
Usability testing is considered to be a core skill in Quality Assurance as it has a specific purpose. The intention is to find whether a system meets it desired purpose and all other skills that we perform to make usability successful
Usability is to ensure that a user can achieve his or her goals while testing a specific system. To obtain usability we need to focus on different things like how do people use the system? What is easy to use? What can be difficult to use? Is the system ready to test? What changes would users like and what would they not like? When the user uses the system, there can be some bugs which will be apparent to the user, and invisible to tester. It can also reveal some enhancements that can improve the system to a great extent.
It is basically what you think about a system under use. To achieve this one must think just like a normal user so that a user’s perspective and thinking about a particular system can be understandable. In other words a usability test is a means of thinking about the purpose and function of the whole product or a whole system.
Usability testing is a black-box testing technique. The goal is to examine people using the system to identify errors and areas of improvement. Usability testing focus in four areas: efficiency, accuracy, recall, and emotional response
- Performance – How much time, and how many steps, are required for people to complete basic tasks?
- Accuracy – How many mistakes did people make?
- Recall – How much does the person remember afterwards or after periods of non-use?
- Emotional response – How does the person feel about the tasks completed? Is the person confident, stressed? Would the user recommend this system to a friend?
Methods of Usability Testing
I am not discussing any methods at this stage because it is too early to touch the complex and technical core of this testing type. The purpose of this document is to make people understand the usability testing. There are different methods like:
- Hallway testing
- Remote Usability Testing
- Expert review
- Automated expert review
Initially you need to convince yourself that the system is fully functional and usable from your own perspective. Sometimes it can be costly, both in terms of money and time..So if you are able to run a usability test then you need to go through all the steps to execute it effectively.
Your tasks must be very clear and must also define some objectives. The tasks should be very simple so that a user can execute them with success. Normally when we start usability we go for the complex tasks first and we ignore all the simple paths in this practice. Then pick a group of people who are unfamiliar with the system and will develop their understanding of it through use. In this way, the users can easily answer what is easy and difficult to use
A tester job is to observe and have fun while doing so. As you are familiar with the system and can oversee many things, stay aside and observe closely what is happening and how the users are interacting with the system. Also you need to record all the comments, behaviors and actions of the users that will help you while preparing bug report
Prepare some questions that emerged while observing. The best practice is to keep them till the end of the usability test so that the users will not be disturbed while performing tests. Then have a session with the users and ask your findings and observations.
Once all questions have emerged and been discussed, it is now time to translate each recommended question into a system modification. If you see closely, all these steps are very exciting and workable. It helps the people itself and for testing team as well. Normally we hide our work from others but it is healthy to share with others. As a human you have some sort of limitations and you cannot go beyond them. When a system undergoes for testing to different people then a chance of emerging critical bugs and potential problems is very obvious. That is why we consider usability a core skill because it is very critical and curtail.
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