My first usability test
I convinced my boss to let me follow a fairly expensive year long class on Usability Design. In exchange, I would conduct an expert heuristic analysis and a usability test on one of our professional websites. Conveniently, this rapport also doubles as the thesis that will round off this course. It’s been a fascinating year and I learned a lot in the classes and workshops. But this pales in comparison to how much I learned from actually going out there and doing my own test. It’s been both educational and confrontational. I considered myself an able listener, I considered myself a more than decent interviewer, a quick-witted person, an amateur psychologist.
Now, with the irrefutable audio- and videotaped evidence before me, I see I still have very much to learn. And I’m eager to start. But we’ll take it one day at a time, and this day I still have to finish writing up the interview and test of testuser3.
