[Photo Credit: Jocko B]

Useability testing, be your testers sheep or goats, is a fascinating, frustrating and (hopefully) enlightening process. Once you’ve chosen your tasks and assembled your testers, you sit back and watch them use your site. Grapple with it, actually. You wonder: Why are you looking there? Don’t you see that tab? Can’t you tell this is a local search? Whyyyyareyoudoingthatstopitanddoitright!

This sort of thinking is counter-productive.

Your poor, beleagured tester is doing this instead of that because that is not obvious. Or, alternatively, this seems to be a more likely goldmine than that. If the latter is the case(something you’ll need to ask the tester during the debriefing bit) then it’s time to rethink your categories.

Let’s say you run an online boutique that sells clothing for dogs, quechiccanine.com. Um, yes, these exist! And no, I don’t dress my dog in argyle. Yet. Continue reading Notes from the User Testing Files: Content Grouping →