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Reflection on the class - The usability testing that we did in class was good, we've always had usability testing talked about but we've never had to sit through it in groups, it was really interesting and definitely a learning curve. The important thing to remember is not to give any clues away to the user as they should be able to complete the task easily or your design does not function well.

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What is Usability Testing

Usability testing is defined as '’the process of conducting a directed interview with a representative user while they use a prototype or actual product to attempt a certain task'' The main reason for doing this is to test how usable the product is and if there are major issues with the design.

There are things that usability does not do like provide a breakthrough design, say whether your product will be successful, and right tell you which user tests are more important than others. But if a usability test is conducted early and often it is more likely to create a successful product, so usability testing goes hand in hand in the creation of our brilliant product.

Just enough research by Erika Hall pages 52-53

Benefits of Usability Testing

This article by Maze discusses usability testing the different ways of testing, benefits, reasons, how to do it, and how you should use the data.

The 5 benefits are...

• Reduced developmental costs - by ensuring the product works and the users do not struggle it saves time and money avoiding creating bad designs.
• Tailor products to your users - by interacting with the users directly and observing how they use the product you can better understand them and alter the product to work with them rather than against them.
• Increased accessibility - by doing user testing you can understand how accessible your products are seeing where they have issues or where they struggle allowing you to make changes to make them more accessible.
• Increased user satisfaction and brand reputation - by understanding any issues the users may have during testing you remove that issue for everyone allowing the users to have a more positive experience with the brand.
• Combat cognitive bias - using usability testing you get objective feedback from real people ensuring that the design decisions are based on real-life users rather than assumptions or opinions you have on them.

https://maze.co/guides/usability-testing/

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Reflection on my research - Usability testing is a really important thing to do and can easily be useless if the interview is not directed well, is too guided, and if suggestions are made. But it's still incredibly important to do as it will let you know whether a product will be successful or not and the earlier they are conducted the higher the potential for success. It's also very interesting to see the comparison of how effective different types of testing can be. Ill make sure to do user testing for my app.

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