Usability Testing methods- What are we observing and why? (World Usability Day 2006 Event)

Next week is World Usability Day, a day when the usability community gets out to raise awareness and visibility about the field and goals of usability engineering and user centered design.

"World Usability Day 2006 promotes the value of usability engineering and user-centered design and the belief that every user has the responsibility to ask for things that work better". (from the WUD site)

Here are a couple of items related to World Usability Day that we are doing at Experience Dynamics, a leading usability and user centered design consultancy.

1. Special Event-Usability Testing methods- What are we observing and why? 

Nov 14th 2006 12pm (Americas and Europe) and 6pm (Asia)

When conducting usability testing, what do you measure and why? How do you capture metrics and what you should be measuring?

In this World Usability Day exclusive web seminar, we will discuss usability testing observation metrics and best practices.

Agenda:

1. Usability Testing metrics: What are the things you should be measuring? How to measure qualitative vs. quantitative data (e.g. satisfaction vs. effort).

2. Usability testing observation best practices: Do you measure time on task every time? What do you need to do a good job capturing metrics if you are doing "quick and dirty" discount usability or "guerilla" testing, without undermining your own efforts?

3. New tool for usability testing logging: LiveLogger. Just released this week, we will review a new  usability test logging application. We will review the new LiveLogger interface and discuss what the tool does, how it captures and reports on usability testing metrics.

Summary: In this 1 hour live web seminar (held twice on World Usability Day), we will review usability testing observation best practices.

Length: 60 minutes

Who should attend: People new to usability testing or want to conduct rapid usability testing; usability managers; user experience team; anyone responsible for user advocacy or usability testing.

Learn more about this exclusive web seminar

Register by simply sending an email (limited seating)

2. Multi-language Translations of The Importance of User Experience (poster).

The poster now translated into 20 languages and being presented at numerous locations by usability consultants and practitioners around the globe (so I'm told) ;-)

The poster is available for download in: (or for purchase in English here)

French, Dutch; Spanish; Bulgarian; Swedish; Portuguese (Brazilian); Chinese (Mandarin); Danish; Arabic; Greek; German; Hebrew; Portuguese; Italian; Norwegian; Finnish

Coming soon: Turkish, Polish, Russian, Icelandic.

The poster has also appeared on UX Mag as picked up from Angie McKaig's site, where she said:

"Great little visual overview of UX and why it's important. If I still worked in an office, I'd totally want this for my cubicle. And my boss's. And his boss's". (thanks Angie ;-)

Read more about the science behind the poster here

Find out how to buy a printed poster for your wall (English)

Thanks and Best Wishes,

Frank Spillers

p.s. Also check out The Importance of User Experience in B2B Enterprise Environments(JPEG, altered version)

Comments

[Cory Bates]

Thanks very much for this post Frank, it sounds like you have some great presentations happening on the 14th! I've signed up and hope there is enough room for me. Anyways, keep writing the good write.

Cory Bates