Discussion 9wk6
Angela
User testing tests the interface and how people use a website, mobile applications, or services. The user testing review is usually undertaken by actual users performing the testing processes in real situations. It is used to assess your products and services with existing users to create human-centric products and services. User testing enables individuals
to understand their audience as they interact with products and services offered on a website or a mobile application (Rogers et al., 2005). It primarily entails observing users interacting with hardware or software systems, such as websites, mobile phone applications, and other desktop applications. The following are the types of user testing, their significance, and an example of each.
Remote unmoderated user testing
A remote unmoderated user testing occurs when participants accomplish pre-determined actions using a design or interface. In this case, the contributor solely decides when and where they would like to finish the test through online tools to participate, give feedback, and record the session (Whitenton, 2019). The unmoderated remote testing does not require a researcher to attend each test session since it utilizes a software application offering users instructions, recording their actions, and asking specified follow-up questions.
Unmoderated remote user testing happens remotely without a moderator during the sessions. It provides an immediate, vibrant, and affordable user testing result. The unmoderated remote user testing is anchored on usability testing tools that can automatically collect feedback from the participants and record their actions on the platforms (Whitenton, 2019). The significance of unmoderated remote user testing involves affordability since it is cheaper than other user testing types. The second importance of unmoderated remote user testing is that it permits the participants to complete tasks independently without a moderator during the sessions. Finally, unmoderated remote user testing allows participants to complete the survey at their convenient time. Thus, it eliminates the need to coordinate hassle. An example of unmoderated remote user testing is that it can be utilized in scenarios with pre-determined questions to ascertain how a website and mobile phone application users use a user interface for straightforward tasks.
Beta testing
Beta testing offers an opportunity for actual users to use a product to disclose issues before general release. It entails real users undertaking their test in a production setting running on the same hardware and networks. Beta testing enables a person to roll out an almost complete product to individuals eager to try such a product and give honest feedback (Jiang et al., 2016). Thus, it offers an avenue to raise concerns, make inquiries, ask questions, and get reviews to track product usage to fill bug reports. An example of a situation where beta testing can be utilized is when a product is near complete and needs to be released to consumers to get their reviews and feedback.
References
Jiang, Z., Scheibe, K., Nilakanta, S. & Qu, X. (2016). The economics of public beta testing.
Rogers, M., Patterson, S., Chapman, R. & Render, M. (2005). Usability testing and the relation of clinical information systems to patient safety. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK20503/
Whitenton, K. (2019). Tools for unmoderated usability testing. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/unmoderated-user-testing-tools/
Miriam
User testing is a technique used in the design process to evaluate a product, feature, or prototype with real users. User testing is very important, it allows the design team to identify friction in user experience when they are designing so that it can be addressed before being deployed. Identifying any issues early reduces the longer-term cost (Every, 2021). User testing helps understand the people’s use of the products and the purpose. There are different types of user testing. The purpose of usability testing is to determine how easy your design is to use. When it comes to usability testing, observing how users interact with a product rather than asking them directly how they feel about it is key. Techniques such as eye-tracking, which observe and track a user’s eye movements using a pupil-tracking device, are useful for eliciting unbiased user reactions and responses to your design (FutureLearn, n.d.).
Usability Testing
The process of testing and improving the ease of use of a specific interface
Usability testing can take a number of forms:
Very structured, in a videotaped setting, 100 users, quantitative measurements
All the way to:
Very unstructured, sitting next to 5 users and asking them what they didn’t like about an interface (called quick-and-dirty usability)
Formative testing
Earlier stage of development
More focused on general design choices
More qualitative
Summative testing
Later stage of development
Focused on specific interface widgets
More quantitative
No dividing line between them
One of the important user testing’s is usability testing, which tests the usability of the product or service. Such as an application, a web app, a website, etc. The main goal of the test type is to discover usability issues of the design-preferably before it is exposed to a larger user base. Usability testing involves the people who use the product so that you can better understand the ease of use and intuitiveness of the design.
Concept testing occurs in the early stages of the design process. “This could look like a paper-based sketch of a concept that is shared with users, as well as user interviews, surveys, and focus groups that can be conducted in-person or remotely” (FutureLearn, n.d.). The goal of concept testing is to understand how users feel about the product idea before investing time and resources into the development.
A/B testing compares two different versions of a design with users to determine which one users respond to better. By creating two separate prototypes and testing them with different sets of users. It’s important to focus on one variable at a time when conducting an A/B test to avoid skewed results. Could test something as specific as the copy on a call-to-action button or something broader like the user flow of an onboarding process (FutureLearn, n.d.).
“Level 1 usability testing might involve observing physicians interacting with an EHR in isolation to carry out tasks and might determine that specific surface-level aspects of the user interface need to be improved (such as making alerts and reminders more prominent on the computer screen)” (Kushniruk, Senathirajah, & Borycki, 2017). For example, in the case of an EHR, it might be important to know whether the system can be easily used during actual clinical interactions or if it interferes with clinical reasoning. It is essential to fully test systems, the second level of testing is then needed: clinical simulations, as illustrated as Level 2. Clinical simulations extend usability testing by examining systems under real or realistic conditions, settings, and contexts of use in health care. To evaluate whether an EHR system works as expected when a physician user interacts with it during a patient interview, a clinical simulation can be created whereby the user such as the physician’s interactions with the system are recorded while they interact with either a real or standardized patient.
References:
Aiyegbusi O. L. (2020). Key methodological considerations for usability testing of electronic patient-reported outcome (ePRO) systems. Quality of life research : an international journal of quality of life aspects of treatment, care and rehabilitation, 29(2), 325–333. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11136-019-02329-z
FutureLearn. (n.d.). Types of user testing. FutureLearn. Retrieved from https://www.futurelearn.com/info/courses/ux-design-fundamentals-management-business-model/0/steps/245286
Kushniruk, A., Senathirajah, Y., & Borycki, E. (2017). Effective Usability Engineering in Healthcare: A Vision of Usable and Safer Healthcare IT. Studies in health technology and informatics, 245, 1066–1069.
Miriam
After reading the “Exploratory Testing vs. Scripted Testing – A Quick Guide,” the most crucial bugs identified are:
A usability test is used to evaluate the product or service with the help of a representative user.
Review the pros and cons of both tests.
A test plan is required to conduct a usability test.
The right level of documentation is required in Scripted Testing (Eriksson, 2018).
Exploratory testing, a learning approach to software testing, emphasizes the personal freedom and responsibility of each individual tester. While Scripted testing requires testers to follow a detailed step-by-step approach to test a specific functionality (Lin, Simon & Niu, 2018). Script testing is done with the intent that the tester is going to follow the script that is well documented and has the testing steps as the template. The only choice in the scripted test is the language used and if you execute the test cases via manual or automated tools. With script testing, you need ample time for documentation as well as planning. It requires testers to define test cases in advance with instructions that explain the expected results of the test.
The main goal of scripted testing is to keep the necessary documents ready before the testing process.
Some of the pros of scripted testing include:
Wells-suited for automation
Good in finding functional defects
Some of the cons of scripted testing include:
There may be non-standard results across individual testers
Fewer bugs are found
With the exploration, Bugs can be detected quickly. But with Bugs are only detected at the end of the test cycle. Both testing styles locate bugs; however, while exploratory testing locates many bugs, they may miss some of the more crucial ones as the speed plays a major part and the script testing fewer bugs are found due to just being a script and you can’t deviate from it.
References:
Eriksson, U. (2018, July 17). Exploratory testing vs. Scripted Testing – A Quick Guide. https://dzone.com/articles/exploratory-testing-vs-scripted-testing-a-quick-guide
Lin, X., Simon, M., & Niu, N. (2018). Exploratory Metamorphic Testing for Scientific Software. Computing in Science & Engineering, 22(2), 78–87. https://doi.org/10.1109/MCSE.2018.2880577