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How to Conduct a Usability Test of the Prototype (Part 1 of 3)

Then, you test the unit with representative learners to assess the effectiveness of your proposed design. This type of test is called a usability test. A usability test is special type of review in which people who are representative of the intended learners try to learn, using the prototype lesson. As learners use the materials, independent observers record responses, and make the development team aware of the issues that arose during the review. By observing learners, you see first hand the strengths and weaknesses of the learning program under real world conditions. Before proceeding with the design, you would reinforce the strengths and address the weaknesses. You might also conduct usability tests later in the process, after the entire learning program is drafted, to get a sense of how the entire program works together.

Usability tests are essential for asynchronous courses, because learners must be able to use them without assistance. But without a usability test in advance, that might not be feasible. Studies have shown that usability tests identify numerous roadblocks that other reviewers cannot find. In fact, a study compared the problems with a draft found by usability experts and those actually encountered by users. The “best” expert could only find 48 percent of the roadblocks that users found. This means that only way to effectively identify roadblocks is through a usability test. Another benefit of conducting a usability test on a prototype is that the design and development team might differ in its proposed approach to covering the content. The test assesses the extent whether the one presented in the prototype will work.

Rely on outside experts called usability engineers to plan and conduct usability tests. Usability engineers are people who have a background in industrial pyschology and received training in how to conduct these tests. Sometimes usability experts have the job titles of human factors engineers because they engineer the interaction between the machine or software and the product.

Rely on outside experts, first, because the designers, developers, and sponsors on the development team are too familiar with the learning program to carefully observe users in a test. This is a type of bias, and it discounts the results of the test. The vested interest of the development team in the results also provides a strong reason to use an outside expert to conduct the usability test. The last reason to use outside experts to onduct usability tests is that these tests require careful planning and implementation that require specialized expertise.

The discussion continues: General Procedure for a Usability Test

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