usability testing - hexaware.com · based on jakob nielsen’s 10 usability principles known as...
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© Hexaware Technologies. All rights reserved. www.hexaware.com
Usability Testing
Presented by
Authors
: Digital Assurance Practice
: Vishvesh Arumugam [email protected]
: EduKondalu Kalikiri [email protected]
Whitepaper
Usability Testing
Table of ContentsIntroduction
The Need for Usability Testing
What Hexaware Offers?
Conclusion
About Author
03
03
03
05
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2© Hexaware Technologies. All rights reserved. www.hexaware.com2© Hexaware Technologies. All rights reserved. www.hexaware.com
What Hexaware Offers? With decades of rich experience in quality assurance and continuous research and innovation we have come up with a holistic perspective to usability
testing crowned by CrowdSource approach.
3© Hexaware Technologies. All rights reserved. www.hexaware.com
Usability Testing
IntroductionUsability testing refers to assessing a product or an application by testing it with the end users. It takes into consideration the level of understanding
and the technical expertise of the end users. It helps determine how fast, accessible and user friendly the product or application is.
The Need for Usability Testing Digital solutions have become important as businesses look for innovative ways to engage and interact with their customers. Today, the digital world
expects seamless service across all the channels to ensure a delightful customer experience. The products are not focusing enough on understanding
the user’s needs, hence failing to meet their expectations. Applications or products are more interested in adding new features, instead of making them
easy-to-use.
In today’s competitive digital world, all products carry almost the same features, but only those make it at the top which are easy to user. Users are
also not willing to spend much time trying to evaluate or understand an application as they have a wide range of options to choose from. A Forrester
research says ‘’77% of the users possibly return if an application is easy to use“, and businesses may fall or lose customer base.
Usability testing is an intricate environment and requires in-depth planning and expertise on the following areas:
• Geographic Diversity : Most applications are designed to be accessed all around the world. Hence, evaluations should also cater users all
across the globe.
• Technological Ecosystem : Some applications make sense only within their intended usage environment and tests should be conducted only
in that context.
• Time and Cost : Usability tests should have a quick turn-around time to report, because the recommended fixes should take place in the same
development cycle.
• Security : Certain prototypes cannot be exposed pre-release and most applications carry confidential information hence usability testing
should pay high attention to information security.
• Performance : The speed of access is critical for sustaining the customer foot print and the speed in which application loads, is key for
user experience.
• Accessibility : Tools help make an application compliant with accessibility guidelines, but to give an equal experience to differently abled
users, the testing should engage them.
Customers are looking for service providers who can offer a diversified user feedback and a measure to determine their applications’ scoring on end
user experience.
Heuristic Evaluation
CrowdSourceApproach
UsabilityMeasurement Index (UMI)
Accessibility Evaluation
Performance Evaluation
4© Hexaware Technologies. All rights reserved. www.hexaware.com
Usability Measurement Index - a Quantification ApproachThe Usability Measurement Index (UMI) is an enhanced checklist formulated by our usability experts to assess the interface. Together with the
feedback from the Crowd Source tasks, the experts analyze the entire interface against this index to identify usability issues and generate an overall
usability score based on five key factors.
The five most important factors of usability assessed and evaluated in this approach are:
• Learnability : We evaluate if the capability of a software product can enable the first time user to learn how to use it. Thus, the steps that are
required to perform a task using the product or application can be learned easily, thus making the product or application self explanatory.
• Memorability : After a user learns a product, they may use it again. So even when the user uses the application or product after a long period
of time he or she will be able to use it without any difficulty.
• Efficiency : Evaluate the ability of a user to get information and perform a task within reasonable time Thus the product or application becomes
very much efficient.
• Trust & Credibility : Usability testing should have a quick turn-around time to report as the recommendations or fixes has to be taken place in
the same development cycle to save time and costs.
• Satisfaction : It is very important that the user is satisfied with the overall product. This can only happen if the product or application is
easy to use.
Usability Testing
The CrowdSource Approach Unlike conventional usability tests where users are called to test in a restricted lab, we leverage on the CrowdSource approach which favors the users
and test environment to be relevant to the context. Users sourced from this approach are asked to perform the certain tasks in the Think Aloud method
which encourages users to speak out their thoughts and actions and provide feedback on the overall experience.
Usability experts are helped by the Crowdsource team in picking the right set of user groups for testing based on the domain and demographic
requirements of the application.
We leverage Remote Testing to cover variety of users with geographic diversity and technological ecosystem. Our team of usability experts closely
observes and records each user’s behavior, performance and experience, which helps in discovering critical usability parameters such as:
• Time on a task
• Issues per task
• Navigation patterns
• Eye focus tracking
• Mouse paths and clicks
However, often what users do is different from what they say. We carefully evaluate user feedback and their interaction behaviors to bridge the gap
between intention and perception.
The Hexaware AdvantageHexaware has a very unique approach called as Usability Management Index (UMI).
The framework to quantify any application usability using theUMI is what sets Hexaware apart from its competitors.
5© Hexaware Technologies. All rights reserved. www.hexaware.com
Performance EvaluationThe performance of the system is rigorously evaluated under realistic conditions to identify usability issues and to compare measures such as success rate, task time and user satisfaction with requirements. The realistic conditions include the speed of the CPU, the data connectivity, etc. But Hexaware considers all these factors which may affect the performance of the application or product. Thus Hexaware has an advantage over its competitors, since it considers all these condition while making the product or application itself.After all evaluations are complete, our usability team brainstorms their findings and solutions, and aggregates them to create a customized usability report.
Usability Testing
Heuristic EvaluationBased on Jakob Nielsen’s 10 usability principles known as Heuristics, evaluators examine the interface and judge its compliance with these principles.
Heuristic evaluations assure an application for basic usability.
Heuristic evaluation is extensive, and if performed early can reduce time and cost on development.
Accessibility EvaluationHexaware has the potential to make interfaces as per usability standards, thus making the websites or applications fast and user friendly. According to the
law, differently abled people have equal rights to access and use any website or application. Hence, it is important that the interface complies with
accessibility standards. Very often interfaces are designed without considering accessibility, which leads to customer dissatisfaction. But Hexaware always
considers its users feedbacks and works on them, thus making all products that are designed by Hexaware easily accessible and user friendly.
We employ assistive technologies and special users to verify the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0) defined by the World Wide Web
Consortium. The following accessibility principles are evaluated under WCAG 2.0:
Conclusion: Usability testing is critical for the success of any application or product. Hexaware has had many success stories to its credit and its usability recommendations
improved the client’s product efficiency by almost 10%. The comprehensive report with qualitative and quantitative feedback that Hexaware provides, gives
the client a decisive edge in developing a superior user-friendly application.
RobustUnderstandableOperablePerceivable
6© Hexaware Technologies. All rights reserved. www.hexaware.com
Usability Testing
DisclaimerContents of this whitepaper are the exclusive property of Hexaware Technologies and may not be reproduced in any form without the prior written consent of Hexaware Technologies.
To learn more, visit http://www.hexaware.com
1095 Cranbury South River Road, Suite 10, Jamesburg, NJ 08831. Main: 609-409-6950 | Fax: 609-409-6910
About Author:Vishvesh Arumugam Vish is an experienced strategic consultant involved in defining testing strategies and testing solutions for large transformational programs. His strengths are
process optimization, engagement planning and estimation strategies for projects in ERP, PLM and banking applications. He has rich experience in
understanding client’s “As - Is” process maturity and provides tailor made processes to align with client’s testing team for maturity goals. He brings in strong
testing project life cycle experience with hands on experience in end-to-end operations.
EduKondalu KalikiriKondal is passionate about designing the things that are of the users, by the users and for the users. He has been pursuing this passion for more than a
decade and has a sound experience in each and every layer of UCD/UXD process. His core academics are into Visual design and trained in HCI- Human
Computer Interaction. He loves understanding the user needs and finding a meaningful solutions to them. He has rich experience in leading the design
solutions for numerous products in Healthcare, Travel, E-Commerce, Gaming domains. He is vocal in emphasizing the need and importance of usability
testing in software development cycle and is been instrumental in building and leading the practice as one of the core offerings of Quality Assurance and
Testing services at Hexaware Technologies.