Categories: Business

Top 10 Mobile Usability Testing Methods

Introduction

Usability testing is all about picking up influential people to interact with your app so that you can observe their dealings and responses to it and make changes, ergo. Whether you start by following simple session recordings or convince groups of people into a lab full of eye-tracking equipment, usability testing is indispensable to assuring that you are building a good and delightful experience for your users.

Usability testing is an essential tool you can employ to estimate the functionality of your mobile application and helps you assure that users can steer your app efficiently and effectively. This article will demonstrate mobile usability testing and delve into the various available testing approaches.

What’s Mobile Usability Testing?

Mobile usability testing is solely the process of simulating how a real user would use an app. It involves testing varied factors, including interface experience, performance quality, functionality, navigation, etc. An intuitive user experience is a must for every app. Hence, the development team and QA testers should always ensure an app delivers its predefined functions to drive advanced customer engagement and satisfaction.

Why Run Mobile Usability Testing?

The primary intention of running a mobile usability test is to pinpoint possible glitches to ensure it delivers the expected worth and practicability from users. Usability testing helps guarantee that your app is adding value to your patronage and meeting the prospects of the end-users. Ensuring you possess good usability for your mobile app will help your business enhance client satisfaction, reduce time on customer support, and increase your sales and profit.

According to research, 67% of users delete a mobile app after enduring unclear navigation and inadequate information. However, usability tests will assist you to minimize tech breaches and enhance end-user experiences when you remotely streamline apps across all company-possessed devices if your business offers apps that are utilized both in-house and client-facing.

Apart from UI performance testing, there is a list of reasons why it’s pivotal to run a mobile usability test before releasing it officially.

  • Identify challenges in design.
  • Discover openings to enhance the design
  • Understand your user behavior and preferences
  • Cut down overall troubleshooting charges and time
  • Deliver a pleasurable user experience

Ten common mobile usability testing styles

Moderated Usability Testing

A moderated testing session involves a moderator mentoring parties through the test. This generally offers further in-depth sequences since the moderator can ask for additional facts and follow-up questions. Moderators can also ask parties to elaborate more on a particular answer to determine how users feel about an app during diverse operation processes. You can better control the test inflow and admit further qualitative feedback.

Still, there are downsides to conducting moderated usability testing. It’s very time-consuming and expensive for an association to conduct since many resources have to be devoted to a small group of people.

Unmoderated Usability Testing

Unlike moderated testing, unmoderated usability testing requires parties to finish all the chores by themselves, without added instructions or interference from the moderator. Unmoderated testing is further time-efficient and less expensive. It’s integral for testing users’ natural ambient when navigating an app. And it’s most suitable if you require extensive sample investigations for more quantitative testing.

Since unmoderated testing requires nearly no supervision, you must make sure all the instructions are unarguably presented before the test. Most unmoderated testing is completed remotely; creating a stable internet connection is top precedence for the test parties’ context.

Lab Usability Testing

Lab usability test asks parties to complete distinct tasks instructed by a trained moderator within a consciously-designed laboratory. Two rooms are broken up by a one-way mirrored window allowing note-takers to observe the test without being seen by parties. The moderator will ask questions, give instructions, and reply to feedback in real-time, analogous to moderated testing. The session may also be recorded for additional review and analysis after that.

The main benefit of lab usability testing is that it provides standardized quality control for each conducted test. This is specifically significant if you arrange to run comparison usability testing. In extension, lab usability testing offers comprehensive user information about how users are experiencing your product.

Guerrilla usability testing

For guerrilla usability testing, parties are generally chosen haphazardly from a public place, like a cafe, station, or supermarket, and asked to commit a short usability test for small prizes such as coupons or gift vouchers.

Guerrilla testing is frequently conducted among a wide range of populations that don’t have a history with a product preliminarily. It occasionally serves as an ad-hoc test for the UI/UX squad to infer the functionality and design. 

Contextual Inquiry

The contextual inquiry approach observes how parties interact with the product in their natural surroundings, such as offices or homes. The investigators will also watch how parties complete an assignment and ask them why their actions are to understand the user’s demeanor.

This strategy is an excellent way to recoup reliable information about users, involving work preferences, personal behavior, and the scenarios required for the product. These insights are essential at the initial stage of development.

Eye-tracking Test

An eye-tracking test is used to observe a user’s eye shift through a pupil tracking device. The moderator uses heatmap and path graphics to analyze how users channel their attention when asked to complete a task. It helps businesses decide which portion of the mobile design is most alluring for their end-users to achieve the desired mission.

The negative of eye-tracking tests is the cost of paraphernalia and software needed and hiring trained technicians to help you operate the device.

Screen Recording Test

Screen recording tests are an approach to usability testing that records sessions of how users are using mobile devices to finish distinct tasks instructed by a moderator. It quickly identifies the ease and adversities when users navigate a mobile app. Moderators can assay user clicks, swipe motions, and opinions for added perceptivity with video and audio recording features.

Phone Interview

A phone interview is one genre of remote testing. A moderator will record and verbally instruct a party to finish tasks on their mobile devices and collect feedback. It is a preferably cost-effective method to sample users from different geographic spots than conducting one-on-one individual interviews. It is highly recommended if you are required to collect many data in a shorter period.

Card Sorting

Card sorting mobile usability test is a testing approach that helps developers conclude whether the product design is intuitive and easy to use by nature. The ambient of app testing helps the moderator judge how to make app navigation more productive and intuitive. Test parties are asked to sort virtual cards representing various portions in the app’s navigation to make categorization effortless to extrapolate.

5-Second Test

For you to collect users’ first imprints of a mobile app design and response, QA testers may reckon using a 5-second test. As per recent reports, it is vital to engage a website visitor within the initial few seconds because 55% of visitors spend less than 15 seconds on a website. This test system helps you analyze whether a mobile design can communicate straightforward messages to its target audience. by displaying an image of a landing page or screen to parties for 5 seconds and asking a few follow-up questions for further data analysis.

When running a 5-second test, it’s dynamically recommended to keep your target audience in mind. In addition, to reach the ideal results, you can run A/B tests to find out the best design combination for gauging the conclusiveness of your communication.

Conclusion

Usability testing is a pivotal phase of the app-building operation. Still, a considerably functional and easy-to-use application is well within your reach with this information in your armory.

Ethan

Ethan is the founder, owner, and CEO of EntrepreneursBreak, a leading online resource for entrepreneurs and small business owners. With over a decade of experience in business and entrepreneurship, Ethan is passionate about helping others achieve their goals and reach their full potential.

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