Ever wondered how to conduct an UAT? What are the main issues to keep in mind? Below some great tips there by redsneaker which blogs on zmogo.com, find the full article here
- Find 7-10 people who may use your site. These should be a variety of people and not just family and friends.
- Write down a list of questions to ask the testers. These should be centered around the activities on your site. For example if you are an e-commerce site, ask them to buy a specific item. Have them walk you through their thought processes as they go through the process of that activity. It may be helpful to video tape these sessions for review later.
- Keep the requests simple.
- If they have trouble finding something, ask them “What are you looking for?” or “What are you expecting to see?”
- You will find 80-90% of all the usability issues after 7-10 people.
- Keep record of the patterns that occur between testers. Are they all having trouble finding one particular item?
- Don’t worry about them successfully completing the task, just document what they did to accomplish it. Later, analyze the results to see if there were any changes that would make sense for your site.
- Keep the testers at ease and let them know you are not evaluating them, but rather the web site. Reassure them that they are helping the web site development team make the site better for everyone.
- Make the changes deemed necessary to improve the usability of your site. This could range anywhere from relabeling some navigation items, to a complete redesign of the site.
- Finally, reevaluate after making some changes. Test with another group of 3-4 users to see if the same issues continue to occur. Keep all usability testing sessions brief. Also don’t be afraid to retest after any changes in the site in the future. Sometimes it’s difficult to see the faults of the site since we are the developers and it makes complete sense too