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Tech Troubles and Usability Testing

By John Wooden
Fredrickson Communications Usability Lead

World Usability Day is a good opportunity to offer a friendly reminder of the value of usability testing.

A recent article in USA Today* cited a Harris Interactive study in which about 85% of those polled said they had become so frustrated with the customer support for a technology product, “they ended up swearing, shouting, experiencing chest pains, crying, or smashing things. Slightly more than half said not being able to get a live person on the phone was their greatest frustration. . . . Seven out of 10 people polled said representatives weren't trained adequately.”

The easier a product is to use, the less need there is for extensive (and often costly) training, documentation, and customer support—and the more satisfied customers will be. As the USA Today article notes, “The benefits of simple, elegant products extend beyond goodwill from customers. Companies that excel in usability can improve their return on such investment more than 10,000 times, estimates Randolph Bias, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin's School of Information and co-author of Cost-Justifying Usability.”

The most effective way to learn if a product is easy to use is to conduct usability testing with representative end users. Observing people attempting common tasks with a product while they “think out loud” can be tremendously illuminating. With testing, it’s possible to identify the specific aspects of a product that cause confusion or frustration, and then determine how to correct those problems.

But don’t wait until just before a product is ready for release to test—correcting a problem at that point (or worse, after it’s already been released) can cost 100 times as much as correcting that same problem in the design phase.

Usability evaluation is essential for web sites and applications, but the same methodology can be applied to any product or service, including customer support.

Who wouldn't agree that the technology around us needs to be more usable? We could all do with a little less swearing, shouting, crying, and smashing things—not to mention chest pain.

*“ Technology troubles set off tantrums, tears and tirades,” by Jon Swartz (11/6/2006)
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-11-05-tech-support_x.htm

About the author

John joined Fredrickson Communications in 2000, when he moved to the Twin Cities from the wilds of southwestern Ontario. He has worked on a variety of usability, information architecture, and UI projects for numerous clients. Last year, he taught a course on usability and user-centered design at the University of Minnesota.