usability-test

name	Usability Test
description	Find out whether people can actually use it, and record what they did rather than what they said.
category	Research

Usability Test

Watch people try to do the thing. The output is behaviour, not opinion — what somebody says about a design is weakly related to whether they can use it.

When to use

• A design rests on an assumption about how people behave.
• Two directions disagree and the argument is about taste.
• Anything with a task in it is about to ship.

Steps

1. Write the task, not the question. "Change your billing address" — never "what do you think of this screen".
2. Recruit for the behaviour, not the demographic. People who have actually needed to do this.
3. Say nothing while they work. The single hardest step, and every prompt you give destroys the finding you were about to get.
4. Record what they did — where they hesitated, what they clicked first, where they gave up. Time and clicks matter less than the moment of hesitation.
5. Separate usability from preference. Five people is a real sample for "can they do it" and no sample at all for "which do they prefer". Say which you ran.
6. File it. record_entry on research-findings with the method, the sample and the implication. A finding with no implication is trivia.

Output

research-findings rows stating what people did, with the sample beside each. Findings that contradict the current direction go in first, and they are the reason this pass exists.