Preparing your rapid usability test

Last updated on 2025-11-04 | Edit this page

Estimated time: 80 minutes

Overview

Questions

  • What are usability tests and when are they used?
  • When should a rapid usability test be used?
  • What tasks or prompts should participants complete during the usability test?
  • How do you define success criteria for each usability test task?
  • What should be included in a usability test script?

Objectives

  • Understand the benefits of usability testing
  • Identify a set of tasks for moderated, rapid usability testing
  • Define success criteria for each usability test task
  • Develop a usability test script
  • Prepare usability test environment

What is usability testing?

[Author note: This episode is incomplete and needs some more information and writing to complete]

Usability testing (also commonly known as user testing or usability-lab studies) is a UXR methodology that primarily focuses on observing how users directly interact with a specific software, technology, or tool. In a usability testing session, a researcher will ask a participant to perform a series of tasks or respond to a set of prepared prompts related to the tool being tested. The researcher will observe their behavior and ask follow-up questions when necessary. Most often, usability testing provides researchers with opportunities to work with real users and enables them to evaluate if the user will be able to use the tool to accomplish what they set out to do. Usability testing can help researchers identify any problems in the tool’s design, learn about the target user’s motivations and preferences, and determine areas for improvement.

Discussion

Challenge

As you begin planning your usability test, you should consider and answer the following questions to help identify what tasks you would like participants to complete and what resources you need to get started:

Question Why?
Qualitative or quantitative testing? Add your answer here
In-person or online/remote testing? If in person, what location can be used as the testing environment? Add your answer here
How many testing sessions will you run and how long will each session be? Add your answer here
Who are the testers? Add your answer here
Who will be running the testing? Will the test sessions be moderated or unmoderated? Will you need support (e.g. an extra person) for facilitation? Add your answer here
What is your budget vs. what is the cost of testing? Add your answer here
What bias should be considered and how can you reduce unconscious bias? Add your answer here

Rapid usability testing

You don’t need a lot of resources to do user testing. We’ll look at rapid usability testing in this episode as a method for researchers who want to get started quickly and cheaply, are working solo, or may need to conduct first-round tests to gain buy-in for further testing. Rapid usability testing is often conducted remotely, with a small pool of users, and can involve an online testing tool.

What you need to get started - Something to test (e.g. your current software, tool, or a sketch) - Facilitator/s (you and maybe a note taker) - Target audience (you should know what user group you hope to test with) - A tool for planning and taking notes (eg. EtherPad/Riseup Pad Google Docs, or Notion) - A virtual conferencing tool or online testing tool to conduct tests (eg. Zoom, Jitsi, Google Meet) - Time to conduct test and evaluate feedback

Identify tasks for a rapid usability test

[Add intro paragraph]

Don’t try to test every part of your software - that’s overwhelming for you and the participant. Instead, choose a small task that you’re curious about (such as a new feature) or that isn’t working so well (perhaps one known pain-point or bug).

Examples: - Can the user add a new entry? - Can the user sign up? - Can the user send a message? - Can the user upload their first document? - Can the user fill out their profile? - Does the user understand the error/prompt/recovery message?

In a rapid usability test, you can

  • See what the user is used to doing without even thinking
  • Observe and clarify what sorts of cues the user is looking out for
  • Ask what the user views as the ‘correct’ process to complete a task

https://www.nngroup.com/courses/usability-testing/

  • Practice writing tasks that get you unbiased answers to your research questions
  • Review different types of tasks and discover which questions they answer
Discussion

Challenge

Back to Zarah and Ester. Zarah has discovered that Ester has had to ‘hack’ the open source scientific software in order to enter specific environmental data for the ocean-based plants Ester is researching. Zarah would like to understand if offering flexible data entry options for people like Ester would be the best feature to improve the software’s usability or if the bugs that Ester identified require other considerations.

What Zarah’s tasks: [needs completing]

Key Points

Key points

TBC

  • TBC