Posts Tagged ‘UserExperience’
[NDCMelbourne2025] DIY Usability Testing When You Have No Time and No Budget – Bekah Rice
In an insightful presentation at NDC Melbourne 2025, Bekah Rice, a UX consultant from True Matter, delivers a practical guide to conducting usability testing without the luxury of extensive time or financial resources. Drawing from her experience at a South Carolina-based UX consultancy, Bekah outlines an eight-step process to gather meaningful qualitative data, enabling developers and designers to refine digital products effectively. Her approach, demonstrated through a live usability test, underscores the importance of observing real user interactions to uncover design flaws and enhance user experience, even with minimal resources.
Step One: Preparing the Test Material
Bekah begins by emphasizing the need for a testable artifact, which need not be a fully developed product. A simple sketch, paper prototype, or a digital mockup created in tools like Figma can suffice. The key is to ensure the prototype provides enough context to mimic real-world usage. For instance, Bekah shares her plan to test a 12-year-old hospital website, currently undergoing a redesign, to identify usability issues. This approach allows teams to evaluate user interactions early, even before development begins, ensuring the product aligns with user needs from the outset.
Crafting Effective Tasks
The second step involves designing realistic tasks that reflect the user’s typical interactions with the product. Bekah illustrates this with a scenario for the hospital website, where users are asked to make an appointment with a doctor for regular care after moving to a new town. By phrasing tasks as open-ended questions and avoiding UI-specific terminology, she ensures users are not inadvertently guided toward specific actions. This method, she explains, reveals genuine user behavior, including potential failures, which are critical for identifying design shortcomings.
Recruiting the Right Participants
Finding suitable testers is crucial, and Bekah advocates for a pragmatic approach when resources are scarce. Instead of recruiting strangers, she suggests leveraging colleagues from unrelated departments, friends, or family members who are unfamiliar with the product. For the hospital website test, she selects Adam, a 39-year-old artist and warehouse tech, as a representative user. Bekah warns against testing with stakeholders or developers, as their biases can skew results. Offering small incentives, like coffee or lunch, can encourage participation, making the process feasible even on a tight budget.
Setting Up and Conducting the Test
Creating a comfortable testing environment and using minimal equipment are central to Bekah’s DIY approach. A quiet space, such as a conference room or a coffee shop, can replicate the user’s typical context. During the live demo, Bekah uses Adam’s iPhone to conduct the test, highlighting that borrowed devices can work if they allow observation. She also stresses the importance of a note-taking “sidekick” to record patterns and insights, which proved invaluable when Adam repeatedly missed critical UI elements, revealing design flaws like unclear button labels and missing appointment options.
Analyzing and Reporting Findings
The final step involves translating observations into actionable insights. Bekah emphasizes documenting both successes and failures, as seen when Adam struggled with the hospital website’s navigation but eventually found a phone number as a fallback. Immediate reporting to the team ensures fresh insights drive improvements, such as adding a map to the interface or renaming buttons for clarity. By presenting findings in simple bullet lists or visually appealing reports, teams can effectively communicate changes to stakeholders, ensuring the product evolves to meet user needs.
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[PHPForumParis2021] Front-End Quality: Why It’s Also the Backend Developer’s Job – Martin Supiot & Élie Sloïm
Martin Supiot and Élie Sloïm, experts in web quality, delivered a compelling joint presentation at Forum PHP 2021, arguing that backend developers play a critical role in ensuring front-end quality. Representing Opquast, Élie, a pioneer in web quality standards, and Martin, a former AFUP treasurer, emphasized the interconnectedness of front-end and backend development. Their talk provided practical strategies for improving user experience through collaboration. This post explores four themes: shared responsibility, enhancing user empathy, optimizing error handling, and avoiding third-party dependencies.
Shared Responsibility
Martin Supiot and Élie Sloïm opened by challenging the siloed mindset of front-end versus backend development. They argued that backend developers, through their work on APIs and data processing, directly impact front-end performance and accessibility. Drawing on Opquast’s quality checklist, Élie and Martin highlighted how backend choices, like efficient API responses, influence user experience. Their collaborative approach at Opquast underscores the need for cross-functional teamwork to deliver high-quality web applications.
Enhancing User Empathy
A central theme was fostering empathy for users, particularly those with limited technical capabilities. Martin and Élie stressed that backend developers must consider how their code affects user interactions, such as ensuring clear error messages or accessible data formats. By prioritizing user needs, developers can create inclusive applications. Élie’s work with Opquast’s guidelines provides a framework for backend developers to align their work with user-centric front-end outcomes, enhancing overall usability.
Optimizing Error Handling
The duo emphasized the importance of thoughtful error handling, such as personalized 404 and 403 pages, to guide users effectively. Martin explained that a generic error page might lead users to blame their connection, whereas a well-crafted response provides clarity. While 500 errors are harder to test, Élie and Martin advocated for backend systems that deliver meaningful feedback, ensuring users remain engaged rather than frustrated, a principle rooted in Opquast’s focus on quality assurance.
Avoiding Third-Party Dependencies
Concluding their talk, Martin and Élie cautioned against relying solely on third-party authentication systems like Google or Facebook. They noted that such dependencies can exclude users without accounts, potentially losing 30% of a site’s audience. By designing backend systems that support independent authentication, developers can enhance accessibility and inclusivity. This approach, informed by Opquast’s best practices, ensures that backend decisions prioritize user access and engagement.