What is Usability Testing? Why do we need to perform it?

Usability testing is one of the black box testing techniques. Usability testing involves watching how users interact with a product or website and finding out what they like and don’t like. It is a technique used to evaluate a product or service by testing it with users. Usability is a most important and required condition for survival on the Web page. People will not stay on the page if the website is difficult to use. So, Usability testing plays an important role in assessing how easy user interfaces are to use.

Usability Testing Definition

The goal of testing is to find any usability problems, get some qualitative and some quantitative data, and see how satisfied the participants are with the product.

Usability testing is important for quality assurance. It is the ability of a product to accomplish the goals of the user. Usability testing is a method of testing a product by having users do certain tasks and then measuring how easy the product is to use, how long the tasks take, and how the users feel about the experience. This is a unique usability practice because it gives direct input on how real users use the system. Usability testing measures how well a product works for the person who will use it. Usability testing examines how easy something is to use, whereas common human-computer interaction studies aim to uncover rules that apply to all situations.

In usability testing, testers primarily test the user interface’s ease of use. The tester can test user-friendly or non-friendly applications or products. But features such as “look and feel” are not quantifiable, as they are subjective. Usability testing shows how people really use a website and whether they feel comfortable with it according to different parameters, such as the flow, browsing, and layout, speed, and content.

Usability Testing Checklist

The usability testing checklist is divided into three parts: accessibility, navigation, and content.

Accessibility

• Check how long it takes the Website to load.
• Check if there is enough contrast between the text and the background.
• Check the font size and spacing between the texts to see if they are easy to read.
• Check if the website has a 404 page or any other custom-designed page when you reach a page that doesn’t exist.
• Double-check that appropriate ALT tags are added to images.

Navigation

• Check to see if the user recognizes the website navigation.
• Check if the navigation is easy to understand and short.
• Check the number of buttons/links.
• Check if the logo is linked to the home page.
• Check if the style of links is the same on all pages and easy to understand.
• Make sure that there is a site search available on the page and that it is easy to access.

Content

• If the URLs are user-friendly.
• Check if the page titles are written well.
• Check if critical content is visible without scrolling.
• Check whether the headings are clear and descriptive.
• Check if the Headings are clear and Descriptive.
• Check if the styles and colors are the same throughout the website.

Instructor-led Training

Software Testing Online Training

Online Software testing training includes the following modules:

Conclusion