What is Usability Testing?

Usability testing is critical to ensuring your product works well and meets the needs of your target audience. It's a type of research in which user experience (UX) research experts evaluate a product or service by testing it with representative users. In a typical usability test, participants complete a set of tasks while a study moderator watches, listens, and takes notes to collect several types of data that inform product design.

Whether you want to improve your mobile app design, gather data to inform your development plan, or gather any other information for your digital strategy, usability research, and testing offer direct, actionable insights. 

At Blink, we create testing solutions for various products and clients. 

Blink usability specialists and researchers conduct usability tests in various domains. Whether you need to ensure General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance, Accessibility, and WGAC Compliance or are unsure how intuitive your product is, usability testing can help you collect qualitative and quantitative data and determine the next steps. 

Our state-of-the-art usability labs allow observation of all aspects of the user experience. In the lab, we create a testing platform that helps us identify and analyze user actions. We might watch people use an app in a way that feels natural to them to identify trends in user behavior. We might also ask them to demonstrate use in a specific context or attempt to complete a specific task.

Some of the tasks that work well in a lab include:

• Mobile usability testing and mobile application testing
• Onboarding
• E-commerce browsing, searching, and checkout
• Enterprise tools

The usability testing tools we select will vary widely based on the client's needs. Each project will have different usability requirements, but lab-based UX research methods are great for software testing and app testing, where you want in-depth information about real user activity.

Usability testing lets you choose participants representing your users, moderate them, and ask questions as needed. You can then follow up with interviews and ask questions on various topics, such as the user interface, usability problems, or visual design.

Our clients can watch from our comfortable observation rooms or remotely using our secure streaming system. All user interactions are recorded for later review and use in communicating study research findings. The results of these user tests can inform significant parts of the product development process.

In addition to informing stakeholders and management teams about the research, we can conduct remote usability tests at locations outside of the physical lab.

Rapid Iterative Testing and Evaluation (RITE) works well in agile development environments that involve short, iterative release cycles. UX teams prototype designs and test them iteratively, refining the user interface and validating design enhancements in subsequent usability tests. UX teams can repeat this cycle as many times as needed, and internal UI design releases can coincide with the beginning of development sprint cycles in which developers code the next release-ready version of the product.

As a UX partner, Blink will help your team create and implement a UI design-and-test plan that plugs right into your agile development processes and milestones. Iterative usability testing also works well in more traditional development environments that follow a robust user-centered design approach. The ultimate outcome is a design that is tested and ready for release.

Are you interested in testing your product at your location or in the field? We can bring the lab to you or your users. Our portable testing equipment offers all the benefits of a lab plus the realism of an authentic user environment. The portable lab is outfitted with audio and video recording equipment and advanced usability analysis software. We’ve conducted tests throughout North America, Asia, and Europe.

Field testing gathers results about user behavior in its intended environment. For example, we might observe bank clerks using a banking and financial software product to see how well it works for them, or we could follow a project manager around a construction site as she uses a mobile app to see if it meets user expectations.

Field testing can also be helpful when you want many results quickly. For instance, the five-second test gives users five seconds to gather their first impression of a design, whether website content, Android apps, or something else. Then, they answer straightforward questions about the testing company's experience. This kind of test can reach many people quickly in the field.