There’s an interesting debate brewing over the definition and use of the term “Usability Testing” over at Patrick Kennedy’s (excellent) blog.
My (very possibly misguided) take out is that “Usability Testing”, in its proper form, is a specialised practice that often sits under the broad umbrella misnomer (drum roll) of “Usability Testing”. And when people use this term to describe other elements of usability testing (without the quotation marks), they actually mean usability evaluation.
Get it? Don’t worry if you don’t. It’s just some context, but not the point of this post.
The point of this post is a question; is the skill set of a User Experience (UX) professional different to that of a qualitative research professional? If yes, how?
Rhetorically yours (until someone sets me straight!)
; )
Filed under: market research | 5 Comments
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Zebra Bites by Katie Harris is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License. -
I think UX folk will generally have come out of what used to be called “human factors” – which looks at the way in which we, people, use computers – with a particular focus on the experience of using a web application/site. There are a number of disciplines around this.
Also, in terms of usability testing, the tests are not necessarily to determine whether a site is usable, but whether it conforms to the stated requirements (ie answering the question – are we getting what we expected at the beginning of the project?).
Don’t know whether I have answered your question or not … maybe just more context
Hi Katie,
The main difference is that usability testing centres on observed behaviour rather than reported behaviour. An interview is just that, an interview. Usability testing is a behavioural study, albeit a qualitative one.
There are different considerations that need to be taken into account. The most difficult of which is to totally ignore some of the things the respondent is saying in your results.
Recruitment is very different too. It’s based on what people do rather than who they are. This is something that usability consultants have a lot of problems with. Their clients port the understanding they have of market research recruitment over to usability testing. It’s very easy to end up with the wrong people because of a clients insistence on demographics.
Hi Katie,
The main difference is that usability testing centres on observed behaviour rather than reported behaviour. An interview is just that, an interview. Usability testing is a behavioural study, albeit a qualitative one.
There are different considerations that need to be taken into account. The most difficult of which is to totally ignore some of the things the respondent is saying in your results.
Recruitment is very different too. It’s based on what people do rather than who they are. This is something that usability consultants have a lot of problems with. Their clients port the understanding they have of market research recruitment over to usability testing. It’s very easy to end up with the wrong people because of a client’s insistence on demographics.
Sorry ended up posting that twice because I became an apostrophe pedant half way through posting.
Thanks Gavin! That makes sense.
And thanks David. They do sound like quite different things indeed.
Sounds like that for usability testing, the behaviours you’re looking out for need to be quite well defined beforehand. If not, I’m guessing there’d be an observer bias effect that would go unchallenged (without recourse to clarification from the user).
Re recruitment; not sure I understand why, if your ‘market’ is comprised of a particular demographic, you wouldn’t want to recruit on that basis. What would you get from talking to people who would never use a particular site?
P.S Teehee re the apostrophe. I’m a bit the same. : P