Free Webinar: Quick, Easy & Insightful - Conducting Usability Testing in the Wild
May 28th, 2009 — adminPresenter: Dana Chisnell of Usability Works
Date: Wednesday, June 3, 12-2pm
Location: Join us at the iSchool - SZB 556
Source: This presentation is part of Webcontent.gov’s Web Manager University, Spring 2009.
Cost: Free webinar for iSchool students, faculty & staff sponsored by SASI and Professor Bias
Questions: Email Andrea Richeson - aricheson@gmail.com.
SASI would like to thank Professor Randolph Bias for his sponsorship and financial support of the webinar.
Webinar Description
There are those that believe that usability testing must be scientific, and that takes time and money. But useful insights can come just by having the chance to observe participants in the most informal of settings, such as cafés, trade shows, and the company cafeteria. It’s possible to get valid, useful results without traditional testing methods.
In this presentation, usability testing expert Dana breaks down the process of collecting user research data, exploring the essentials and the nice-to-haves. This presentation is perfect for those who have never conducted a usability test, but experienced practitioners will get new ideas, too. Note: This is an online webinar. Participants will have an opportunity to ask questions and share examples at the end of the presentation.
What You’ll Learn
- What the minimal steps of usability testing are
- Where the value comes from in doing usability tests
- Where it may be risky to go minimalist
- How to think about the trade-offs
- What’s essential and what might be nice to have
Speaker’s Agenda
- What is a usability test
- Minimal steps
- Value
- Risks
- Trade-offs
- Q&A
- Essentials
- Nice to have
- Summary
- Q&A and wrap up
Who Should Attend
People who have never performed a usability test, those who have only done usability testing in a lab, and those who have varied experience with user research and usability testing should all get good things out of the session.
About the Instructor
Dana Chisnell is an independent usability consultant and user researcher who founded UsabilityWorks in San Francisco, CA. She has been doing usability research, user interface design, and technical communications consulting and development since 1982. Dana took part in her first usability test in 1983 while she was working as a research assistant at the Document Design Center. It was on a mainframe office system developed by IBM. Since then, she has worked with hundreds of study participants, for dozens of clients, to learn about design issues in software, hardware, web sites, online services, games, and ballots (and probably other things that are better forgotten about). She has helped companies like Yahoo!, Intuit, AARP, Wells Fargo, E*TRADE, Sun Microsystems, and RLG (now OCLC) perform usability tests and other user research to inform and improve the designs of their products and services.
Dana wrote the Handbook of Usability Testing Second Edition with Jeff Rubin (Wiley, 2008). Dana’s colleagues consider her an expert in usability issues for older adults and plain language. (She says she’s still learning.) Lately, she has been working on issues related to ballot design and usability and accessibility in voting. She’s an STC Fellow and a long-time member of the Usability Professional’s Association and ACM SIGCHI.
