FRONT - A Strategy, Design and Technology Studio

Andy brought the participants through a well structured workshop on why and how to run effective usability testing sessions. Using examples from web design and computer game design, Andy showed how it makes eminent financial sense to iteratively improve the quality of products based on user testing - a little testing at the beginning of your project with a small number of people can catch the vast majority of issues that would otherwise be experienced after release; damaging the perception of your product and brand.

Basically, Andy’s key point was that our interaction with products and services has a deep impact on the way we live our lives, and perceive ourselves - as designers we have the power to ruin your day, or make it special. We have the power to make you feel stupid in the face of a badly designed interface, or empower you and make you feel a genuine sense of achievement. Usability helps us behave like human beings, to other human beings - basically, to show that we give a shit.

At a practical level we covered things like recruiting test subjects, preparing and writing tests, effective moderation skills and lots more.

It’d be hard to overstate the value of the workshop. Usability testing is something we’ve done in the past on high-value projects, but sometimes it’s been too late in the development process to tell us things we didn’t know, or too late to show us issues we could solve with the resources remaining.

Andy really drove home the need to gain insight into users’ behaviour as early in the formation of any design as possible. I think now, with some of the skills we sharpened yesterday, we’ll have the confidence to balance our clients’ business requirements, good design practice and direct input from the users of our work. A hugely positive day for Front.