Usability Testing methods- What are we observing and why?

Next week is World Usability Day, a day when the usability community gets out to raise awareness and visibility about the field and goals of usability engineering and user centered design.

“World Usability Day 2006 promotes the value of usability engineering
and user-centered design and the belief that every user has the
responsibility to ask for things that work better”.

Here are a couple of items related to World Usability Day that we are doing at Experience Dynamics, a leading usability and human-centered design consultancy.

1. Special Event-Usability Testing methods- What are we observing and why? 

Nov 14th 2006 12pm (Americas and Europe) and 6pm (Asia)

When conducting usability testing, what do you measure and why? How do you capture metrics and what you should be measuring?

In this World Usability Day exclusive web seminar, we will discuss usability testing observation metrics and best practices.

Agenda:

1. Usability Testing metrics: What are the things
you should be measuring? How to measure qualitative vs. quantitative
data (e.g. satisfaction vs. effort).

2. Usability testing observation best practices: Do you
measure time on task every time? What do you need to do a good job
capturing metrics if you are doing “quick and dirty” discount usability
or “guerilla” testing, without undermining your own efforts?

3. New tool for usability testing logging: LiveLogger.
Just released this week, we will review a new  usability test logging
application. We will review the new LiveLogger interface and discuss
what the tool does, how it captures and reports on usability testing
metrics.

Summary: In this 1 hour live web seminar (held twice
on World Usability Day), we will review usability testing observation
best practices.

Length: 60 minutes

Who should attend: People new to usability testing or
want to conduct rapid usability testing; usability managers; user
experience team; anyone responsible for user advocacy or usability
testing.

2. Multi-language Translations of The Importance of User Experience (poster).

The poster is now translated into 20 languages and is being presented at numerous locations by usability consultants and practitioners around the globe.

The poster is available in:

French, Dutch; Spanish; Bulgarian; Swedish; Portuguese (Brazilian); Chinese (Mandarin); Danish; Arabic; Greek; German; Hebrew; Portuguese; Italian; Norwegian; Finnish

The poster has also appeared on UX Mag as picked up from Angie McKaig’s site, where she said:

“Great little visual overview of UX and why it’s important. If I still
worked in an office, I’d totally want this for my cubicle. And my boss’s. And
his boss’s”.