Designing Usability Tests to Solve Common Problems

Designing Usability Tests to
Solve Common Problems
Melanie Read, Head of Digital, University of London
Marie Kitney, Head of Client Services, Numiko
IWMW 2018 11 July 2018
london.ac.uk numiko.com

Outline of the session
In this session we will:
• Share experiences about our redevelopment project
• Share some usability best practice we’ve learnt along the
way
• Work together to think about common usability problems we
all encounter
• Start to develop ideas around usability testing

Welcomes and world’s
worst…
• Talk through in your
pairs/groups about the worlds
worse website experience
• Identify why it was so bad?
• What they could have done to
make it better?

The brief
More training/guidance on how to use the search on SharePoint would also be helpful
for users.
• Raise the profile of the University of London both in the UK
and overseas
• Attract students and build a lifelong relationship with the
University
• Promote the research outputs and to attract and retain
excellent talent to the SAS research institutes
• Focus on recruitment to address the ever increasingly
competitive distance learning market
• Reduce the 100+ websites the University currently has, which
are a result of departments having their own sites, starting
the journey of moving to one website.

“Deliver a world class user
experience to 180 countries”

What we did
• Analysis of existing web properties
• Stakeholder engagement up to VC level
• User research
• Digital brand
• IA development for a unified site
• Content migration planning
• Content governance and workflow
• Drupal 8 development
• ATLAS integration
• Modular pattern library
• Faceted Course Search using Solr

The results
• Courses are the second most visited
page after the homepage
• Up 75% visits compared to the
previous year
• Of the top 50 pages, visited 45
pages are about courses or courses
related material

The results
• A Drupal 8 based web
publishing platform to bring in
100’s of microsites within
London.ac.uk.
• Federated content ownership
with consistent technical
governance.

…but it wasn’t all plain sailing!
• The project presented a number of usability challenges
• Combining content from 2 websites
• Combining 3 modes of study into a single course search
• Various edge cases e.g. study with distance learning but with LTI support
• User journey of selecting course modules
• Showcasing global reach with local support

Example persona(s)
• User 1: I live in the UK and want to study at a University in London
• User 2: I live in Singapore and I want to study with some local support
• User 3: I live in the UK and I want to study independently
• User 4: I live in China and I want to study independently
• User 5: I live in Egypt and I want to study at a University in London
• User 6: I don't yet know how or where I want to study
• User 7: I live in China and want to move to Paris to study on campus
• …and many more!

Discuss usability problems that your
institutions face
• Share with group – are there commonalities?
• Are there outliers?
• Does anyone have any insights to share in how they’ve overcome
similar?

Principles of good usability

What is usability?
“Usability is the extent to which an interactive system can be used by
specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and
satisfaction in a specified context of use.”
• Effectiveness = goal completion
• Efficiency = effort/ cognitive load/ time
• Satisfaction = “free from discomfort

Example
https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/the-full-list-of-yorkshire-road-
closures-during-the-tour-de-yorkshire-1-9143881
Difference between usability and user experience
• Before use
• During use (usability)
• After use

Prototypes & Usability Tests
Prototypes serve as basis for:
• Internal design reviews
• Primitive usability testing
Usability tests can be:
• Face-to-face: ideal for touch devices. Recruit and incentivise through social
media
• Remote: moderated sessions via Hotjar or good old phone + conferencing
software. Context of use (natural habitat) is best
• Unattended: avoid those who work in marketing as well as your peers/
colleagues

Some Useful Tools
Prototypes
Paper, PowerPoint, Axure, InDesign
Usability Testing
Treejack
Hotjar
Silverback
Google Optimize
Visual Web Optimizer (VWO) for A/B testing
Conferencing/ screen-sharing tools such as Skype and Join.me
www.whatusersdo.com

Things to consider
• The master-apprentice model
• Open vs closed questions
• Avoid leading questions, aim to be neutral
• Don’t be too rigid – follow the user
• Make sure user requirements are well articulated first, as
these are the yardstick by which to measure usability later

Jakob’s Law
“Users spend most of their time on other sites. This
means that users prefer your site to work the same
way as all the other sites they already know.”
- Jakob Nielson.

Design Patterns
• We used these to solve common recurring problems and to
reduce cognitive load

Design a usability test
• Select a few of the more common problems we discussed
earlier
• Draft some tests to assess usability
• Assume it’s a face-to-face usability interview
• Remember, usability = effectiveness, efficiency, satisfaction
• Open/ closed questions, leading/ neutral questions

Further reading

Heuristics
Heuristics are generally recognised rules of thumb that help
achieve usability. Some examples:
• Visibility of system status – keep users informed through
feedback
• Match between system and the real world – speak users’
language
• User control and freedom – e.g. undo/ redo
• Consistency and standards – follow platform conventions
• Error prevention – e.g. passwords must contain at least 8
characters
Conduct an heuristic evaluation yourself if you can’t get in
front of users. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-
usability-heuristics/

Seven dialogue principles
These are highly generalised goals for good usability:
• Suitability for the task
• Self-descriptiveness
• Conformity with user expectations
• Suitability for learning
• Controllability
• Error tolerance
• Suitability for individualisation

System Usability Scale (to measure
satisfaction)
• I think that I would like to use this system frequently
• I found the system unnecessarily complex
• I thought the system was easy to use
• I think that I would need the support of a technical person to be able to use this
system
• I found the various functions in this system were well integrated
• I thought there was too much inconsistency in this system
• I would imagine that most people would learn to use this system very quickly
• I found the system very cumbersome to use
• I felt very confident using the system
• I needed to learn a lot of things before I could get going with this system
https://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/system-usability-scale.html
Strongly agree – Strongly disagree.

Designing Usability Tests to Solve Common Problems

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