Handbook of UsabilityTesting: How to Plan, Design, and Conduct EffectiveTests, Second Edition

Is your product user-friendly? Take these steps to find out

Whether it's software, technical documentation, a cell phone, or a refrigerator, your customer wants — no, expects — your product to be easy to use. This fully revised handbook, a leading resource since 1994, provides clear, step-by-step guidelines to help you test your product for usability. Completely updated with current industry best practices and more varied examples, it can give you that all-important marketplace advantage: products that perform the way users expect.

• Learn to recognize factors that limit usability
• Decide whether testing should occur in a lab setting or at the site where the product is used
• Set up a test plan to assess goals for your product's usability
• Choose and train effective test moderators
• Decide on the best way to collect and review data
• Report the results and make recommendations
• Learn user-centered design principles and practices — the context for usability testing
• Reap the benefits of templates, tables, models, case studies, and other tools of the trade

About the Authors

Jeff Rubin has more than 30 years experience as a human factors/usability specialist in the technology arena. While at the Bell Laboratories’ Human Performance Technology Center, he developed and refined testing methodologies, and conducted research on the usability criteria of software, documentation, and training materials.

During his career, Jeff has provided consulting services and workshops on the planning, design, and evaluation of computer-based products and services for hundreds of companies including Hewlett Packard, Citigroup, Texas Instruments, AT&T, the Ford Motor Company, FedEx, Arbitron, Sprint, and State Farm. He was cofounder and managing partner of The Usability Group from 1999–2005, a leading usability consulting firm that offered user-centered design and technology adoption strategies. Jeff served on the Board of the Usability Professionals Association from 1999–2001.

Jeff holds a degree in Experimental Psychology from Lehigh University. His extensive experience in the application of user-centered design principles to customer research, along with his ability to communicate complex principles and techniques in nontechnical language, make him especially qualified to write on the subject of usability testing.

He is currently retired from usability consulting and pursuing other passionate interests in the nonprofit sector.

Dana Chisnell is an independent usability consultant and user researcher operating UsabilityWorks in San Francisco, CA. She has been doing usability research, user interface design, and technical communications consulting and development since 1982.

Dana took part in her first usability test in 1983, while she was working as a research assistant at the Document Design Center. It was on a mainframe office system developed by IBM. She was still very wet behind the ears. Since then, she has worked with hundreds of study participants for dozens of clients to learn about design issues in software, hardware, web sites, online services, games, and ballots (and probably other things that are better forgotten about). She has helped companies like Yahoo!, Intuit, AARP, Wells Fargo, E*TRADE, Sun Microsystems, and RLG (now OCLC) perform usability tests and other user research to inform and improve the designs of their products and services.

Dana’s colleagues consider her an expert in usability issues for older adults and plain language. (She says she’s still learning.) Lately, she has been working on issues related to ballot design and usability and accessibility in voting.

She has a bachelor’s degree in English from Michigan State University.