To really understand your user, its far more effective to get a group of users to start using the web site, watching them and gathering empirical data.
That way, we find out what paths they follow, which graphics they click, where they get lost, and, most importantly, when they lose interest.
What people say is very different from what they ACTUALLY do. Traditional market research methods, such as focus groups and surveys have proven to to have limited success for successful web site design.
By conducting usability tests.
Do you use all the features in your hand phone? Probably not. Every feature adds cost and increases the amount of testing you will have to do. With usability testing early, before writing even one line of code, you can find out for sure which features are worth building.
Usability testing can take place anytime within the product development cycle. By using prototypes of varying fidelity (paper prototypes, wireframes or design comps), we can start evaluating user expectations and get maximum feedback for minimum effort. After a few usability tests, you'll have confidence that you're implementing the right thing.
Boehm, Barry W. Software Engineering Economics. NY: Prentice Hall, 1981. (ISBN: 0138221227)
Dumas, Joseph S., and Janice C. Redish. A Practical Guide to Usability Testing. London: Intellect Books, 1999. (ISBN: 1841500208)
Hackman, G. S. and Biers, D.W. Team Usability Testing: Are Two Heads Better than One? Proceedings of the Human Factors Society 36th Annual Meeting (pp. 1205-1209). Human Factors and Ergonomics Society: Santa Monica, CA, 1992.
Helander, Martin, Thomas K. Landauer, and Prasad V. Prabhu, eds. Handbook of Human-Computer Interaction. North-Holland, 1997. (ISBN: 0444818766)
John, B. E. "Why GOMS?" ACM Interactions, vol. 2, no. 4 (1995): 80-89.
Nielsen, Jakob. Usability Engineering. Boston: AP Professional, 1994. (ISBN: 0125184069)
| About the author |
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Gul Amir Khan is the Chief Usability Consultant for MicroUsability. Gul has been trained in Game Theory and Strategic Behavior Analysis and has incorporated these techniques in web usability engineering.
He has conducted numerous usability projects and usability workshops across Asia.
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