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What's after the usability report
Summary
Just getting the results back from your usability testing isn't enough; the report should also make specific recommendations.
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You had a good idea of where you needed to focus your resource. You designed and ran a great usability test. You were polite to your testers (who all turned up) and you gathered a whole lot of high calibre information about usability issues. Then you wrote it up. Congratulations! What now?
The Usability Report is often the final product of a usability test. That makes sense. You were hired (or appointed, or even volunteered) to identify usability issues with a product or web site and document them. Getting that part right is a substantial, and difficult, task. But what comes next? Identifying usability issues doesn't make them go away--it just attracts the (often reluctant) attention of the people who are paid to make them go away. A true usability consultant (versus a usability test administrator) will commonly be asked to make recommendations about what should happen next to a product if its usability (and hence overall commercial success) is to improve.
But be in no doubt that the transition from test result to development recommendation is a major one. It's one thing to report that 63 percent of users were confused by the wording of the third sentence in the logon instructions; or that 58 percent of users clicked on the big red button even though it said 'Don't Click Here'. It's quite another to a) explain these results and b) suggest what should be done about them. Making the transition from data to action is arguably the best test of a usability consultant's skills. It gets to the heart of the conflict between the softer sciences of psychology, anthropology and sociology; and the harder disciplines of program design; and the sheer reality of commercial product development. A successful consultant is aware of all of these conflicting pressures and able to negotiate between them according to the client's priorities.
Precision
Words fatal to the usability professional are 'confusing'; 'awkward'; 'frustrating' and the like. As terms descriptive of the emotional state users experience when struggling with your product, they're great--but as an indication of what actually went on they say nothing. Break down such terms into precise problem statements using interviewing as well as interpretative skills. When a user reports that a particular feature was 'confusing' dig away at them mercilessly. What, exactly, confused you? Can you describe what you expected to happen versus what actually happened? Which specific word led you off down the wrong track? At what point did you feel you no longer understood what you should do? Confusion might feel like a generalised state of disarray, but in an interaction with a product it has a precise precursor--a word, a button, an image--the resolution of which can transform a product from baffling to desirable. The more precisely you can explain what underlies a recurring usability error, the clearer the corrective course of action becomes.
Granularity
Early usability tests often come up with 'show-stoppers'--big, obvious usability problems (no Start button, links which click through to the wrong page etc) which will ensure the early demise of your product. Spotting these, either via expert walkthrough or during a test, is curiously satisfying, but also relatively meaningless. No real expertise is required to analyse show-stoppers and you will not demonstrate your true worth if this is all you do. Instead, remember that a high proportion of usability problems are fine-grained, often pertaining to users' mental models, conceptual structures and cultural preconceptions. A transaction-based site once failed because it required users to click on 'Add to Basket' before they had selected any products. This might sound minor, but the notion of first selecting a product, then adding it to your basket, both online and in the real world of the supermarket, is so deeply ingrained that to breach it is to invite disaster.
Budget
Be realistic. Recommending a total redesign of the web site may be the professionally responsible course of action, but it will not win you any friends, or a better product. Recommendations should take budget into account and be graded accordingly, thus, a web site targeting the wrong audience might be better off stating the correct target audience explicitly on its home page, changing the typeface, and living with a bad design thereafter, instead of starting from scratch. If usability problems run into the hundreds, classify them according to granularity and start with the top ten. Or top three.
The Usability Report is a vital document. Ensure it is also a powerful one by making precise and meaningful recommendations about specific, and affordable, problems.
Joanna Bawa is a usability consultant and technical writer. She has worked with small agencies and large corporations for the past 15 years to analyse, review and improve upon the quality and usability of their information.
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