Usability is about understanding how, when, and where to improve the site. But on a slightly deeper level it is understanding how easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks, how quickly can they do those tasks, what errors happen for a user and how satisfing the site feels for the users?

I have done quite a lot of usability as a Product Manager.  I even founded the Usability Group at McGraw-Hill. I once contracted with Baruch College’s The Computer Center for Visually Impaired People (CCVIP)   I have completed all the courses offered by Human Factors.  But primarily I enjoy usability testing because it gets me closer to understanding the user and allows me to discuss the options available to managment with Data instead of theories. Towards that end, there are some techniques that I would like to show and explain why I use them.

When it comes to assessing and creating the labels and priority order of any navigation, my go-to activity is card sorting.  Here is an example of me conducting a card sorting test.

BTW card sorting is always better when accompanied by some confidence ratings using Adjusted Wald.

– Surveys
– Flows and stats
– SUS