Usability Testing Workshop

A usability testing workshop for your employees, meetup group, business association or conference will always be entertaining, fun, and most importantly, highly educational. Participants learn a vital skill that’s usually overlooked but always an integral part of creating a successful website: a comprehensive way to conduct and employ your own usability tests.

The workshop consists of a presentation, and a complete, hands-on workshop with live usability tests.

Presentation: 90 minutes

The presentation covers the following topics:

• What is usability testing?
• Who should perform usability testing?
• Why you should perform usability testing.
• The formula for website success.
• What to expect if you don’t do usability testing.
• Excuses for not performing usability testing on your site—and how to get past them.
• Usability testing methods.
• The usability testing cycle.
• What to expect when watching your usability testing video.
• Creating an initiation plan.
• How to perform usability testing with any budget—or even with no budget!
• Watching and analyzing a usability testing video.

The presentation is followed by a question and answer session, then we take a short break.

Workshop: 90 minutes

The workshop itself begins after the break and covers the do's and don'ts of usability testing. Participants learn to identify the top three tasks for their website, choose the most important task, and write a scenario for it.
First live usability testing demonstration:

I’ll choose at random a site belonging to one of the participants, and conduct a live, recorded usability test. A volunteer acts as the tester, and tries to accomplish the site’s main goal. During the test, I’ll explain everything I do and the reasons for doing it. Once the test is complete, I’ll ask for the site's owner's feedback on the findings and how he plans to act on the results.

The participants, having witnessed a live usability test from start to finish, then get to practice being the facilitators. I’ll select a site, a facilitator and a tester, and we’ll start testing another site. We can usually fit around four sites into the time allowed for the workshop.

By the time the workshop has finished, participants will have a very clear idea about how to perform usability tests. They will be able to conduct the tests themselves and train others to do the same.

If you are interested in supplying this workshop for your employees or members, please contact me for more details.

Here's a video from one of the workshops:

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