Why should I?

Government agencies use a range of technologies for information provision, service delivery and administration. A common theme amongst examples of excellence in online service delivery is that they have been developed with the users’ needs and preferences in mind, and are evaluated and improved over time. User testing can be an important part of this development and evaluation process, and can help to ensure that online services are as effective as possible.

The quantifiable benefits that can be achieved through early and continued usability testing include:

• increase in productivity
• decrease in user training requirements
• decrease in calls to the Help Desk and need for technical support
• decrease in user error rate
• decrease in programming costs associated with late design
• decrease in maintenance costs.

What should I do?

You will need to develop a testing plan which describes the testing approach you are using. You also need to define the goals and scope of the testing. Usability testing goals should be linked with specific user interactions. Usability goals underpin the overall design and functionality. They have three facets:

• Performance – What should the user be able to do?
• Conditions – Under what conditions should the user be able to do it?
• Criteria – How well must it be done?

Information Architecture usability testing focuses on testing, improving and refining the information architecture. Specific information architecture features that require testing include:

• design – page design, readability, layout, graphics, scrolling
• finding information – navigation, category names, links
• understanding information – content quality and presentation
• search – quality of search results.

How do I?

Usability tests frequently involve carefully creating a realistic situation in which a person has to perform a number of tasks using the system, while observers watch and take notes. Some tests also use devices such as scripted instructions and pre- and post-test questionnaires to collect feedback on the product being tested.

Subjects:

• Testing
• surveys