Digital transformation has shifted the focus of application development — usability and user experience (UX) now plays a critical role in the success or failure of your mobile app. What exactly is UX? What are UX and UI testing? Why is it important? How do you measure it to achieve actionable results? Let’s dig in.
Usability – It’s About the User
Users have little patience for poorly designed mobile apps: Recent data shows that 80 percent of customers delete apps that don’t meet expectations.
UX forms the core of these expectations and their outcome. Simply put, it’s everything that happens when users interact with your applications. This includes how apps look, how they perform, if features and services work like they’re supposed to, and how long the app takes to load content. User experience also covers more subjective measures such as how users “feel” about your application and its performance. Application User Experience UX testing is designed to measure both specific outcomes and user impressions to deliver valuable feedback about your application before it goes live. When done properly, it should be a core element of the design process and also the development process.
Why App UX Testing?
Why bother with user experience testing? Since end-users are your target market, why not simply release your app and then make improvements based on feedback in the wild? Save the time and cost of having to deal with usability testing UX.
As noted above, just 20 percent of customers will keep using apps that don’t immediately meet their expectations. More worrisome is the fact that many of these users won’t provide any feedback before deleting your app, leaving you with minimal data to start making improvements. Even if you’re able to address consistent issues — such as speed, ease of use or overall appearance — users aren’t waiting for your app to make a comeback. Instead, they’ve downloaded software from competitors that got it right the first time.
In addition, user experience testing can help identify critical flaws in your application that may have been overlooked during regular evaluations of the development process. Why? Because users interact with applications in unexpected ways. While IT teams typically follow specific procedures in the design process to address common failure points and replicate behaviors, end users aren’t bound by any such rules and are a great way to gauge the ability of your app to handle real-life, day-to-day expectations and demands.
WHAT IS A USABILITY MEASURE?
Usability measures the quality of a user’s interaction with a product or system-whether a software application, mobile phone, or any user-operated device. Usability is a multi-dimensional property with variables such as:
- Learnability – How fast can a new user learn to use the software sufficiently to accomplish basic tasks? What is the rate of learning after the initial learning has taken place? Can a beginner user catch up to an experienced user quickly?
- Efficiency of Use – Once an experienced user has learned to use the system, how fast can he or she accomplish tasks? How about beginner users; how fast can they learn how to do a task and be productive?
- Memorability – If a user has used the system before, can he or she remember enough to use it effectively 3 months later or does the user have to start over again learning everything?
- Error Frequency and Severity – How often do users make errors, how serious are these errors, and how do users recover from these errors? What types of users make errors?
- Satisfaction – How much does the user like or enjoy using the system? Are they ‘satisfied’ when compared to other applications of the same type?
Complete UX Testing Services
It’s one thing to know you need user experience testing, it’s another to effectively implement it. At XBOSoft, we offer complete UX testing services, including:
- Usability surveys: We work with you to create custom user scenarios, and then apply our usability criteria matrix to tailor a usability survey. With a targeted user group, we analyze the results and highlight areas as heat maps for improvement.
- Usability evaluation: Our UX experts evaluate your application’s usability by applying your selected criteria according to your industry domain and usability goals. Usability metrics are generated and indicators are applied to evaluate your application’s usability.
- Usability logging: XBOSoft has developed a unique method to gather end-user activity data and then analyze user behavior using key usability metrics according to your criteria. Usability metrics are then collected over time to create benchmarks — standards of performance and functionality that are essential for your app to succeed in the mobile marketplace.
- Usability Testing Tools: There are numerous usability testing tools available on the market, many of them FREE. They all are good at generating “results”, however, the challenge is determining which to use and them interpreting the mountains of data into something actionable. Over the years, XBOSoft has developed a high degree of proficiency with several of these tools as a compliment to our other usability testing services.
UX and XBOSoft
Usability and user experience (UX) are critical in the user acceptance of any software application — rigorous and reliable testing is essential to ensure your UX meets consumer expectations.
At XBOSoft, we offer the critical combination of industry expertise and custom-built user experience evaluation criteria database to systematically categorize criteria according to specific usability requirements. In addition, our testing services are designed to meet your specific application needs and deliver ideal outcomes for your business objectives.
Your app is your first impression. Get it right and customers will use it, positively review it and even recommend it to friends. Take a pass on UX testing, meanwhile, and your app is just one more that couldn’t make it in a tough market. Don’t release an app that no one can intuitively figure out how to use. Instead, create a user experience that leaves a positive, lasting impact.
Next step? Take advantage of XBOSoft’s user experience testing services to ensure that your application delivers business value and maximizes user satisfaction.
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