Skip to main content

Usability Testing

Today we are going to learn what Usability Testing is.

According to the ISTQB Definition, usability testing is testing to determine the extent to which the software product is understood, easy to learn, easy to operate and attractive to the users under specified conditions.

1.    This is a Black box testing technique.
2.    This is also called as “User Experience testing”.
3.    This is done from an end user’s perspective for determining the user friendliness of the application.
4.    This helps to expose usability defects.
5.    This can be recommended to do during the initial phases of the software development life cycle. 

Features of the Usability testing

1.    User’s ease to use the application.
2.    Flexibility in handling controls.
3.    Ability to meet the objectives of the system.

This mainly concentrate on the following components.



1. Effectiveness
When user go through the system, this considers how easy to perform basic tasks of the application.
Ex: How it easy to learn?
       How useful this to the customers?
       How does this system?
2. Efficiency
When considering efficiency of the system, this focus how fast experienced users accomplish tasks.
3. Memorability
This focus after the long period of not using the system, the user could perform the actions without any training or with training again.
4. Accuracy
This focus the retrieved data is correct and valid.
Ex: Outdated or incorrect data
       Broken links
5. User Friendliness
This focus how much user like to use the system and controls requirement of training to operate.
Ex: No need user trainings – Self explanatory
Testing types
The main usability testing methods are as follows.


Laboratory usability testing - This is conducted in the laboratory. During the performance of testing, the testers do the assigned tasks and observers monitor the behaviour of the testers and report outcomes. 
Remote usability testing - Observers and testers are performing the testing. testers remotely log in to the system and do the assigned tasks. by using an automated software, the users behaviour can be monitored. Observers analyse this data and generate the reports.
  
Pros
Cons
Better quality product (highly effective and efficient)
Cost is the major consideration.
Helps to discovering the issues which are hidden from the developers.
Management of usability testers is expensive.
Issues can be identified before the delivery.

Improvements can be made by target audience.


To perform the usability testing,
      1. The target audience should be identified. Appropriate users such as experts and non-experts can be selected to perform the testing.
      2. The testing should be started at the early phases of the software development life cycle.
      3. The testers should be mainly focused on the main and critical functionalities of the system.
      4. There should be an observer for each tester.
      5. The client environment should be understood. 
      6. The competitors should be identified and performed the usability testing before the execution.
      7. The tester should have a big picture of the application and its areas.

See you with another blog post.
Thanks and best regards,
Dananji Withana. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Java basic for Selenium - Selenium Tutorial II

Today we are talking about Array. The software tester should have some basic knowledge about java when writing selenium scripts for the validations. Array is a data structure where stored in elements in same data type. The declaration and initialization an array as follows. int[]  Array_a;   or  int  Array_a[]; - This is an integer array. int[10] = Array_num;  - This is an integer array which stores 10 elements. Array_num[0] = 10;    - Assign value 10 to 0 th element of array. (Index [0]) int[]   Array_num = { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 };  Finding maximum value of an array Finding minimum value of an array Finding average value of an array Find the key of an array Reverse an array The time complexity of this algorithm is   O(n/2)   which is O(N) because we are iterating over array till midpoint only. The initial iteration is happening as follows The...
1 comment
Read more

Security Testing - I - Web Testing - I

Security Testing - Web Testing  Security is set of measures to protect an application against unpredictable actions that causes it to terminate functioning. Security testing is a process intended to reveal flaws in the security mechanisms of an information system that protect data and maintain functionality as intended. This is type of non functional testing. For minimizing the defects by identifying threats in the system and cost of quality, the security testing must be started at the early stage of Software development life cycle. The following figure is shown the relation between Software development life cycle and security testing . Test plan should includes Test scenarios and test cases related to the security. Test data related to the security test cases. Test tools for security testing and test outputs on the different test tools Security Testing Approach 1. Identify all the business requirements, security goals ...
2 comments
Read more

Strategies and methods for test case design II

Strategies and methods for test case design Today we are talking about how to get an approach for writing a good test case. Developers cannot prevent or eliminate all the defects raised in the application during implementation. That's why the application should be tested before deliver to the customer. Before starting the execution, we need to identify test scenarios and write test cases for each identified scenarios. Test case is test description which needs to be executed to verify the functionality or feature of the application. A good test case have a good possibility of finding defects. For designing effective test cases, there are two basic strategies that can be used. Black box test strategies White box test strategies Test Strategies Sources Testing Techniques Black Box  Functional requirement specification Equivalence partitioning   Business requirement specification Boundary value analysis   Domain knowledge State Transition Testing     ...
Post a Comment
Read more