Usability Methods

Card sorting is a useful tool to determine how users categorize the information that will appear on a website.

A charrette is an intense generative exercise that takes place over multiple days, and involves a multi-disciplinary group of participants.

To determine the level of usability for a website, one or more usability experts  “walk” through a set of the most typical user tasks supported by the website, one-step-at-a-time.

A contextual task analysis, or contextual inquiry, is a user research method that applies ethnographic observation and one-on-one interviewing to understand the task procedures that users follow to reach their goals.

Most people have heard of brainstorming, and probably been involved in some type of brainstorming exercise; however, facilitated brainstorming is much different than simply gathering in a small group and sharing ideas.

Focus groups are best utilized as an evaluative tool, rather than a generative one (such as Facilitate Brainstorming and Charrettes). A Moderator facilitates a small group of 4 to 8 participants, by showing them or demonstrating a product or concept.

A Heuristic Evaluation, or Usability Audit, is an evaluation of an interface by one or more Human Factors experts.

Structured, one-on-one interviews help researchers learn about users’ attitudes and beliefs surrounding a website or application, and specific tasks that it supports.

Participatory design exercises engage stakeholders and end users in the process of solving a design problem.

Surveys are a good way to collect quantitative data for user opinions about an application or website.

Usability testing is the best way to understand how real users experience your website or application. Unlike interviews or focus groups that attempt to get users to accurately self-report their own behavior or preferences, a well-designed user test measures actual performance on mission-critical tasks.

From our perspective, quality assurance is a subset of the overall usability goal—after all, a website isn’t usable if it isn’t working.

Eberts (1994) [1] describes four Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) design approaches which may be applied to user interface designs to develop user-friendly, efficient, and intuitive user experiences for humans.