Re: Usability testing for Web apps

Anne--

I recommend an article by Ginny Redish in the May 2007 issue of the online Journal of Usability Studies:
http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org/upa_publications/jus/2007may/utesting-complex.html

It provides helpful perspective on the issues, as well as suggestions on techniques to incorporate.

Regards--
Joy

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ACM SIGCHI WWW Human Factors (Open Discussion) 
> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of [email protected]
> Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2007 10:38 AM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Usability testing for Web apps
> 
> Hello all,
> 
> We all know that we should do usability tests early and often 
> in a user centered process.
> 
> For "regular" web site, you take participants that are 
> representative of your users, you make them do some tasks to 
> validate ease of use.  Pretty straightforward.
> 
> But for a web application?  Our users will be trained and 
> will use the application as their main work tool.  How can we 
> recreate that in an hour usability test?  We want to test the 
> navigation and some main tasks.  But we think that the 
> problems and comments we get in our current tests probably do 
> not represent the "real life situation" of our end users.
> 
> Of course, we get some valid comments on the application, but 
> more, for example, on the position and visibility of the 
> elements then on architecture and task support.
> 
> Did any of you test the ease of use of a complex application 
> with a standard usability test?  How can we detect major 
> flaws before getting too far ahead in our design?
> 
>  
> 
> Any comments or suggestions are more than welcome...
 
> Anne    
> Anne Deputter 
> 
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