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It's Called Usability Testing, not User TestingTuesday, March 25. 2008 I’ve been hearing people misuse a common UCD term, saying User Testing when they mean Usability Testing. Semantics, you say? Not so. The term User Testing would imply that the user is being tested, when in fact, it’s the prototype and its usability that is being tested. One of the first things explained to participants during usability testing is that the goal is to determine how usable the proposed solution is. Not how well the user has performed. Because it's the 'Usability' of the prototype that is being assessed, the correct term is 'Usability Testing'. Conversely, the term User Research (a study often done at the earlier stages of a redesign) suggests that users are being researched: who they are, what information they seek, how they interact with the existing site. This takes on many forms – surveys, focus groups, contextual inquiries, interviews, stats analysis, etc. The focus is on the ‘User’, and thus the approach is called ‘User Research’ or ‘Audience Research’. To summarize:
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To add to the semantic mix-ups, there's also User Acceptance Testing (UAT) which usually consists of testing the site or application against its original requirements to ensure the correct functionality.
Thanks for the clarifications, Sophie! Your points on the idea that you're testing a site, not the user, are well taken. But I think "user testing" can be appropriately used to mean "testing with users." Usability testing is a narrow category -- suggests your only looking at how easily users can perform a particular set of tasks, not necessarily about their first impressions, overall reaction, information retention...
Ditto what Anna said.
Each time a Project Mgr or a biz owner asks me, "when are we doing user testing"? They are talking about testing with users. And that's fine w/ me. I'm not going to correct them! |
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