Userfocus Usability Newsletter, May 2013

Welcome to the May edition of the Userfocus usability newsletter.

• Message from the Editor
• Feature article: My place or yours? How to decide where to run your next usability test
• What we're reading
• Upcoming training courses
• User experience quotation of the month

Message from the Editor

Although user experience is a about a lot more than usability testing, there’s no doubt that usability testing is one of the best methods at our disposal to test out our hypotheses.

Hypotheses like: Is this solving a real problem for customers? Is the problem bad enough that they’ll pay for a solution to it? Are our users able to use the solution? What other uses for our product do they want or expect?

And there’s a variety of different usability test methodologies that we can use to answer these questions. So this month I thought I’d write about the different types of usability test and how to choose between them.

I hope you enjoy the article.

— David Travis

Feature article: My place or yours? How to decide where to run your next usability test

The most common types of usability test are remote usability tests, corporate lab-based tests, contextual usability tests and rented facility tests. What are the relative strengths and weaknesses of these different approaches to usability testing and how should you choose between them? Read the article in full: My place or yours? How to decide where to run your next usability test.

What we’re reading

Some interesting usability-related articles that got our attention over the last month:

• The value of shared language in successful facilitation and critique.
• Page load times really matter. A 1s delay caused a 3.5% drop in conversions on mobile.
• The Government Service Design Manual. More interesting than it sounds.
• 40 years of icons: the evolution of the modern computer interface
• Is Jeff Bezos the new Steve Jobs?
• Cognitive overhead, or why your product isn't as simple as you think.

Like these? Want more? Follow us on Twitter.

Usability Training: Now Booking

How to carry out a usability expert review, May 16, London.

This seminar reveals the practitioner secrets behind expert reviews and will teach you how to think like a usability expert. 2 places remaining. More information about this training course: How to carry out a usability expert review.

Web Usability: An Introduction to User Experience, June 10-11, London.

This web usability training course will give you hands-on practice in all the key areas of usability, from identifying your customers through to usability testing your web site with them. 3 places remaining. More information about this training course: Web Usability: An Introduction to User Experience.

User Experience quotation of the month

“It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them.” — Steve Jobs.

Hungry for more?

Read previous newsletters.