Web Usability Blog

We have been conducting interviews for a new staff member and when given the opportunity to ask questions at the end, many have turned the spotlight back on us: “What is your favourite thing about your job?”.

The number one piece of advice we can give anyone embarking on a user research project, is for you and your colleagues to watch it live, as it happens.

We sometimes come across clients who argue that they don’t need to do any UX testing because they undertake A/B or multivariate testing. They say that these approaches provide hard evidence of what actually works. It is hard to argue with “We made this change and there was a 10% uplift in sales”.

Usability testing is the best way to find out if your site is effective – that is, will it work with real users and help you achieve your online goals. Watching real users interacting with a site or app (both in development and live) is the best way to understand the issues that interfere with a good user experience; it also forces those with responsibility for the site or app to ‘walk in the users’ shoes’ – often an unsettling experience!

Facilitating usability testing can be a daunting prospect. How can I get through all these tasks, stay on time and listen to what the tester is saying?

What is the best type of navigation for your website? With our 15 years of UX experience and many hours spent watching thousands of testers on hundreds of websites here are our thoughts.

The UK is a wonderfully diverse and multicultural place. As much as 8% of the UK population, some 5.3 million people, report their first language is not English.

Within the UX world, more and more technologies are emerging that measure users’ physiology to gain a deeper understanding of their thoughts and emotions. These include measuring heart rates, sweat gland activity and even brainwaves. One example is facial recognition software. By people in the know it is described as the ‘systematic analysis of facial expressions’. To everyone else it means using a computer to understand someone’s emotions by reading their expressions.

There are many different ways to approach usability testing these days… lab-based testing, online surveys, field research and self-videoing testing to name just a few. While all have their place in the UX world, you need to consider carefully which methodology you choose. Pick incorrectly and you are likely to end up with low-quality insights and wasted time and money.

“We need more research now, not less”. These are the words of the leading UX consultancy Nielsen Norman Group (NNg). As UX insight specialists we obviously agree with these sentiments. NNg comments “Lots of teams have decided to hold off on doing previously planned research projects, but I believe this is a time for more research, not less. User research is a form of risk reduction, and the greater the risk (for example, because of rapid change), the more you need that risk reduced.”