What is usability testing? And which companies provide this service in America?

Digital saturation is a real problem, so the difference of whether one running app feels easier to sync with your watch can be a matter of millions of downloads. We only need to look to the rapid success of neobanks to see what a difference usability makes - it almost toppled the domination big banks.

Functional testing is when you check that a button works from a technical standpoint. Usability testing, though, males sure that a user actually knows why they should click it and can do so without frustration. A three second subjective experience can dictate the entire judgement of a company.

The principles of usability testing

So, how do we define usability? Well, we don’t need a theoretical answer, we need an empirical one. So, the answer simply comes from testing the product with its representative users. Unlike other forms of quality assurance (code integrity, server response times etc.) this is a human-centric test, often organized by consultancies (view service). It’s qualitative at heart, though when scaled up this is often turned into quantitative data.

The main objective is to identify the friction points that prevents a user from completing a specific task, be it checking out of an e-commerce store or signing up for a newsletter. Unlike other testing, this is all very close to home in terms of a company’s bottom line. There isn’t much abstraction - a small improvement in a checkout experience definitively improves revenue.

It is important, though, to distinguish this from the broader field of user experience (UX) design. While UX encompasses the entire spectrum of a user’s emotions, aesthetic preferences, brand perceptions, and so on, usability is a specific subset focused on efficiency and effectiveness. Basically, honing in on usability helps distance yourself from style over substance. 

Why companies prioritize user feedback

User evaluations shouldn’t be just to spot glaring errors after launch, it should be a part of development. While big errors are important, it’s also about friction. “Good enough” may not be 

The main driver here is the direct correlation between ease of use and customer retention. Especially with SaaS firms, retention is so important because customer acquisition can be high. When a user finds a pain point, like a repetitive hurdle, the likelihood of them abandoning the application increases. What percentage jumps ship will likely depend on the demographic. 

Because of the closeness of this connection between usability and sales, it’s easier to view as an investment with a return. It can be highly calculable, too, compared to other types of testing, which relies on more abstract costs like downtime which are tricky to estimate.

Conducting these evaluations early on in the development cycle is far more cost-effective than attempting to fix after a product has already been launched. So usability testing isn’t a final hurdle, but a concurrent part of development that helps waste reduction.

Common methodologies

Interface evaluation approaches will always depend on the project goals. Moderated testing has deep insights due to its real-time guidance, whereas unmoderated testing provides environmental validity by capturing more natural behavior. Heuristic evaluations use expert reviews to catch design flaws and help responsiveness across devices early on in development. 

Accessibility assessments make sure software is inclusive and compliant with international standards. This helps cater to less represented demographics, which increases sales (many competitors will not), but also improve brand reputation. 

Prominent agencies providing usability services

For those looking to outsource these evaluations to specialized experts, several leading agencies operate within the US to provide the infrastructure, participant recruiting, and analytical expertise.

1. QAlified: A specialized quality assurance and testing firm with a big presence in Santa Rosa, California, offering usability, accessibility, and heuristic assessments.
2. UserTesting: Based in San Francisco, this agency provides a massive platform for on-demand human insights and video-based user feedback.
3. AnswerLab: A research agency with offices in San Francisco and New York that focuses exclusively on user experience research.
4. Blink UX: Headquartered in Seattle, this firm specializes in evidence-driven design and complex user research projects.
5. Experience Dynamics: A Portland-based consultancy that focuses on high-level usability audits.

Measuring success through specific user metrics

To turn qualitative observations into quantitative data, researchers use KPIs. The "task success rate" is perhaps the most fundamental, unsurprisingly, being the percentage of participants who successfully completed a predefined goal. But you need more than this to understand why they are/aren’t.

Time on task helps identify whether a process is unnecessarily laborious. If a user takes five minutes to complete a task that should take thirty seconds, the interface is effectively taxing the user's time.

But we can go more qualitative to understand the why. Researchers often use subjective measures like the System Usability Scale, this involves asking users to rate their experience through a standardized questionnaire right after testing. 

By combining what users do (behavioral data) with what they say (attitudinal data), companies get a much clearer picture. To do this without an agency would mean finding testers and developing your own methodology, both of which is unnecessary. Ultimately, the goal is to make the technology not the core of the experience, but a vehicle to achieve the trust objectives.