Usability Testing

The City of Vancouver finally launched their redesigned website. I say finally as it was at about a two year long project and it was something that was long overdue.

Full disclosure: Analytic Design Group did the in-depth usability and accessibility assessment on both the mockups for the redesign as well as a prototype.

One of the key questions we get from clients is "how usable is our product?" There are various ways this can be answered, providing scores for various metrics (average task time, average user satisfaction rating, etc) is one option, but sometimes a single usability score is more helpful.

A usability study, is that like a focus group?

Clients sometimes ask this question when we start talking about doing usability testing on their website or product. The answer is “well sort of, but not really.”

Until recently I hadn't found a particularly compelling reason to use Twitter. Some of my colleagues raved about it but it just didn't interest me. Recently, however, I found a good use for Twitter - recruiting for a user research study.