Usability Testing

• Craft a test plan. This document outlines the goals and objectives of the test, data to be collected, participants, and test tasks. The test plan serves as a high-level guide for test execution. 
• Recruit Participants. Based on user criteria, the research team find representative users to participate in the study. Based on the type of products and scope, the research team may use an external recruitment service or work with company stakeholders for internal tools and products.
• Run tests. Once the test plan is finalized, the usability test runs until all desired data is collected. Types of data include task success, task efficiency, ease of use, and user satisfaction. Tests can be either live or remote, moderated or unmoderated. Testing typically takes two to five days to complete. 
• Analyze data. Once tests are complete, researchers compile notes from all of the participants to identify trends and metrics to address the test objectives outline in the test plan. The final deliverable is a report detailing key findings and recommendations.

In order to improve a new customer sign-up flow, the research team ran a task-based usability study to validate the intuitiveness of a newly created flow. This example shows what we learned from a user trying to add phone to their Internet services. 

We asked participants to go back and add phone services to their internet package after they had made initial selections. What we discovered was participants could easily add the phone service, but they didn't necessarily know they had completed the task. One user stated, "Now did that happen automatically in there? Oh it did. Usually there's a save button or something."

Based on the feedback from all participants, we determined that adding or changing services lacked the appropriate feedback. We recommended  adding a notification confirming a change to the cart.

The revised layout below shows a notification that appears when a user adds phone service.