Understanding the data gathered during usability testing is a crucial UX skill.
Once you’ve finished usability testing, it’s time to use those skills to analyze your results so you know how to proceed with your designs.
Analyzing usability test data is all about going back over the notes and videos from testing to find emergent themes and usability problems. For example, if 5 of 6 participants struggled to complete a task, that’s a significant finding that you’d record and report in your analysis. When putting together your usability test plan and test script, you selected metrics to capture task completion. Use those in your report.
• Successful task completion
• Critical errors
• Non-critical errors
• Error-free rate
• Time on task
There are several ways to package your usability test report. Depending on the size and importance of the project, some companies will expect you to make a slide deck and present your results. Others want a document that outlines the findings.
In most cases, if you’re not a researcher, we believe a document of your findings is more than sufficient. A document is faster to create and helps you highlight the most important analytics without wasting time on how best to present the data.
