Usability Testing—It's Not Rocket Surgery

Description

After Steve Krug wrote Don't Make Me Think, he spent five years teaching a workshop about basic usability principles. People really liked it, and a lot of people who took that workshop suggested he should teach a full day just about usability testing.

Finally, two years ago, after a lot of pondering, Steve figured out how to structure a day that included everything he thought people need to get started doing testing on their own, including some hands-on practice.

This made him very happy, because he's convinced that usability testing is the single most valuable thing you can do to improve a Web site, a Web application, or a piece of software, and not nearly enough of it gets done.

In this day-long session, he'll teach you how to do your own low-cost/no-cost testing that's simple enough to make it a routine part of your design process.

What You'll Learn

• A complete explanation of Steve's recommendations fordoing testing (Hint: very simple, very fast, and very cheap)
• A live usability test on an attendee's site, so you can see the whole process in detail
• A chance to practice conducting a test on your own site
• Advice on how to interpret your findings and decide what changes to make
• Plenty of time to answer your questions about testing or any other aspect of usability

Pre-Requisites

Pre-requisties for this course (found on Steve's Web site Advanced Common Sense):

• A sample chapter (PDF, 520 KB, 10 pages, December 2009) from Rocket Surgery Made Easy which should give you a good idea of what the book is like.
• 25 minute video of a demo usability test mentioned in Chapter 2. It is on Steve's publisher's site. You can watch it there, or download it in several different formats.
• Other downloadable files mentioned in the book can be found on Steve's website Advanced Common Sense

Steve recommends that you read Rocket Surgery Made Easy before the workshop—it is a fairly short (168 pages), easy read.

Who Should Attend

The short answer is “anyone involved in publishing a Web site.” Graphic designers, programmers, writers, editors, project managers, and VPs can all benefit from this session.

Whether you already do testing and want to know more, or have never done testing and want to start, or even if you don't ever intend to do your own testing but are responsible for hiring, managing, or paying other people to do it, this session will prove valuable.

Some of the topics covered

• What “do-it-yourself” usability testing means, and why it always works
• How to get buy-in: Dealing with bosses, stakeholders, and check-signers
• What kind of people—and how many—to test
  (Recruit loosely, and grade on a curve)
• What to test, and when to test it
• The art of specifying test tasks
• How to facilitate—when to listen and when to probe
• Why you shouldn't use exit and entrance questions
• How to decide what to fix
• No more big honkin’ reports: Why you should avoid writing test reports, and what to do instead
• Remote testing methods and tools
• ... and much more.

About the Instructor

For 15 years, usability expert Steve Krug labored in pleasant obscurity, helping clients like Apple, Bloomberg.com, Lexus.com, NPR, and the International Monetary Fund develop products and Web sites that people could actually use and enjoy. But since his book Don’t Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability appeared in 2000 and sold 300,000 copies, he’s had to settle for relative obscurity.

Steve's new book, Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems, explains why and how everyone with a Web presence can—and should—be doing their own usability testing.

Steve currently spends most of his time teaching usability workshops, consulting, and watching Law & Order reruns. His consulting firm, Advanced Common Sense ("just me and a few well-placed mirrors"), is based in Chestnut Hill, MA, and exists online at www.sensible.com.