Usability Testing

Usability evaluation is an essential part of user-centered product development. Evaluations can be done without users with inspection methods, or with users by user testing methods, such as usability testing. Usability testing is an evaluation method in which one or more representative users at a time perform tasks or describe their intentions under observation. To get information about the users’ cognitive processes, the test participants are usually asked to think aloud while performing the test tasks. In addition to traditional usability testing with predefined test tasks in a controlled test environment, there are several modifications available. Paired-user testing, peer tutoring, pluralistic usability walkthrough, visual walkthrough, informal walkthrough, contextual walkthrough and other modifications of usability testing offer a variety of methods to suit different goals and contexts.