Our clients hire us for usability testing when they need objective feedback on their product from real end users. We use a qualitative approach to usability testing, where we encourage the participant to talk about their reaction to the product and how it fits into their world. The main goal of our usability testing is to identify design problems. However, our clients also learn a great deal about the actual people who use their products by observing the sessions.

If your product is still in concept or early design, we might use paper or electronic screen shots to elicit feedback. If the product is already released or in alpha/beta, we can run the sessions with the existing version, and perhaps blend our inquiry with prototypes showing new feature concepts. In between releases clients hire us to usability test their product and then a competitor's to see how the two measure up.

In a typical usability testing engagement, we first meet with our client to learn about their product, their understanding of the end user(s), and their usability concerns. From this conversation we create a usability testing plan that describes test objectives, target audience, areas of focus, methods, and any other details needed to produce a balanced and comprehensive view of your product's usability.

In recruiting participants, it is important to enlist test users who meet the profile of your target user and who can be totally objective. We can handle participant recruiting for you, or refer you to businesses that specialize in this area. However, as part of our service, we like to help you identify the type of end user who will bring you the most valuable feedback. We like to work with the party who is handling recruitment to ensure they understand the key screening characteristics.

With usability testing, the best success comes with team participation. We strongly encourage engineers and other team members to observe some of the sessions and to take part in the discussion and vetting of usability feedback results. If usability testing is new to your organization, then we take extra care to introduce it gently and effectively, making sure to let the team know exactly what to expect. We facilitate the debriefing so the team can review, prioritize, and make decisions on the feedback. In the most successful situations, debriefing sessions are full of energy and wonderful ideas as the team works together to come up with solutions to create a more usable product.