The importance of Usability Testing when Implementing new systems
I have just recently read an article by Carol M. Barnum who is the Director of the Usability Centre in Southern Polytechnic State University in Georgia, USA.
In this article, I feel that she has brought up very important points regarding the success of Implementing an eLearning Course, or in my case a Knowledge Management Service within an organisation. She suggests that the overall goal of usability tests should not be perfection, but improvement. To my surprise, Barnum has argued that focus groups are not an ideal way of determining the usability of software. She suggests that participants in Focus Groups “…do their best to express their desires, but these desires frequently turn out to be wrong in actual use of the product. The reason for this disconnect between wishes and reality, proven time and again in usability studies, is that users really don’t know what they want until they actually do something with a product.”
Barnum also states that expert reviews are an inadequate way for conducting usability tests. The reason for this is simple, experts who review software usually have the experience and mental models to know what to expect. This may result in having them identify issues “…that do not, in actuality, turn out to be problems for users. It’s really good at identifying the little things that can be annoying. It’s not so good at identifying ’show stoppers’.”
Therefore, an effective usability test involves user experience. The result of the usability test (from a new user) should not be a measurement of success for the implementation of a new system, but a record of queries that help improve the system.
