Usability Testing

Usability testing is a method of evaluating how well a design, product, or service will be received by asking people to use it and provide their feedback. Usability testing sessions are usually conducted one on one, with a study “participant” and a “moderator.” The participant is asked to use the design while the study moderator asks deepening questions, takes notes, and communicates with the client team.

Researchers at Progress have conducted hundreds of usability tests, across a broad range of products, contexts, and business domains. We perform both qualitative and quantitative usability studies and we are known for obtaining data that is not only actionable but authentic and realistic.

Progress researchers are trained to follow what is “alive” within the participant’s experience while also collecting the task-based feedback. As a result, research sessions often communicate key insights that were not expected, leading to new research questions and design learnings.

All of the sessions are recorded for further analysis by the researcher, and also shared with the client for later viewing. Typically, recordings are synthesized into video clips for inclusion in study reporting and communication of findings.

Remote Usability Testing

Remote usability tests are conducted via online screen share (using Zoom, Hangouts, or similar) with the study participants using the design and speaking with the moderator via webcam and microphone. We have been innovating remote usability testing methods for many years, finding this modality to offer several key benefits:

• Participants often feel more comfortable as they’re speaking to us from their own environment.

• We often learn a great deal about the participants’ environment during the course of the sessions, as opposed to speaking with them in a lab environment where all of the surroundings are the same. This is often referred to as an “ethnographic bonus” of remote testing.

• As there is no need to travel, we can speak with people all over the world, often within one or two days. Similarly, the client teams are able to seamlessly observe sessions from their own locations.

• Study moderators are able to communicate with the client teams during the sessions more easily, via Slack or similar, so that key questions can be answered in real-time, during the conversations.

Moderated vs. Unmoderated Remote Usability Testing

The great majority of remote usability testing at Progress is conducted with a moderator. While there is value in and a time and place for unmoderated testing, there is no substitute for live, relational qualitative usability testing. When a study participant says something unexpected, or there is a question to be answered based on what is occurring during the session, the moderator can explore further, at the moment it occurs, often leading to new insights that could not have been anticipated.

We feel this is one of the primary values of usability testing - to not only gain the answers to questions we know to ask but to learn new insights that we could not have known before the sessions began.

Interested to know more about usability testing with Progress? Connect with us and we’d be glad to talk with you about your project.