Usability testing is an essential technique to evaluate a product by testing it on the end users. It is an effective method of analyzing the performance and drawbacks of an application. This process provides integral feedback on how real users use a system and what they think about it.
The main goal of usability testing is to ensure that an application meets its requirement specifications. The earlier a defect is found, the cheaper it is to fix it. So ideally, the right time to conduct a usability test on an application is at the time it is being designed. However, the software undergoes many changes throughout the development process. Hence, usability tests must be conducted often for better results.
Usability testing is a part of the black box testing technique. It is executed as an internal process and can be performed by designers, developers, and independent software testers. Based on the results of the test cases, the design and/or code of software can then be modified.
A more advanced approach to usability testing is to hire real-time users and give them a few particular tasks. A facilitator can be appointed to create these tasks and drive results from the users. The users can provide information such as whether the task was successful or not, the ease of performance, their experience of using the software, etc.
Other ways of carrying out usability tests are:
In this first step, one has to identify users who are neither too experienced nor too amateur.
The second step is to design situations in which the users will use the application. One will have to make sure that the tasks are either similar or closely related to the activity which an end-user does with an application.
The final step is to facilitate the environment in which the users will test the usability of an application. When the users are testing the application, the tester team would keep an eye on the behavior of the application, gather the results, and extract a conclusion from the usability testing activity to ensure that the application is providing smooth performance.