Getting started

Now when you talk about user experience testing, or UX for short, you usually think of software development, maybe even operating system development. Complex measurement routines, audience testing and so forth. I probably could not cover it all in this post — I never intended to.

But you can employ effective improvements to your user experience into your project, too. The most basic test is probably to have someone inexperienced with the matter sit down at your website, game or program and giving them a task to complete.


Do not, in any case, intervene. Yes it will be hard. Very hard even. And yes, they will be making horrible mistakes, even going as far as far as breaking the functionality of your test subject in often hilarious (Well except for you) ways.

Keep your hands off, take your notes and ask your test person afterwards what they were trying to achieve. Listen. They will provide you with valuable insights to their methods and ways to do things. And remember: if it breaks this is first and foremost your fault. It shouldn’t break with use or even abuse.

Now chances are you don’t have someone around, but still would like to do some testing on your website. Use Google’s Analytics. It shows you where people clicked on your site.

Things to check for

• Were they likely to know the outcome of clicking said link? Was the link labeled properly?
• If that link weren’t there, would it lessen or improve the user experience. Why?
• Are the important links prominent enough, using action verbs instead of plain descriptions?
   E.g. “Download the game” vs “Game download”.
• Use strong visual clues like hover effects and graphics for vital links/options.

Last but not least, something that I recently learned: don’t play games with the user.

Lessons gleaned from my projects

Good
I can see that my “Go to top” link at the page bottom, which takes the user back to the page top and saves them a lot of scrolling has 27% of the total clicks. More than a fourth.
If the link weren’t there, they probably wouldn’t have left, but their browsing experience would be lessened.

Bad
Due to time constraints, I did not remove a function which generated links for my promotion posts. This function allowed me to display pictures and link them somewhere to promote this location.
So, I wanted to feature the launch of this website, I put a nice image there and some text.
As I didn’t have any link I just put a “Go to page top.” link there, which took the user to the site-top.

Over 18% of the people clicked.

The joy of an early release lasts but a short time. The bitterness of an unusable system lasts for years.

-Unknown

And they were probably confused whether my page was broken, or maybe there was something wrong with their computer/browser. The link didn’t take them anywhere, but the mouse cursor clearly stated that it was a link.
This is terrible UX. How many users, do you think, left my page in a confused/irritated mood?

This was definitely not good.

I quickly wised up and coded a switch into the CMS, which allows me to toggle the link for each and every promotion. Much better.

Now the image and the link show up as plain text, notifying the user that there is no hidden functionality that they are missing out on — allowing them to move on.