All You Need to Know About UX, UI, and Usability Testing
Tags: testing, ux
Published: 2022-11-14 10:40:43

## What is UI/UX Design?

The User Interface UI is focused on the look and design of the product. Every screen, button, page, and various other visual components that you see at the time of using a product. and User Experience (UX) is the strategy of enhancing the comprehensive experience of the users or visitors when they connect with your product.

## What is The Benefit of UI/UX Design?

The primary goal of any business is to increase its growth of the business, revenues, and engagement. UI/UX Design is playing an essential role to fulfill the objective of offering maximum consumer satisfaction that ultimately helps increase the number of users of the specific product and to win the users’ confidence.

## What is Usability?

Usability means just how comfortable your product is to use for an average user. How easy is the learning curve? How quickly does a user get what they want? Is there anything annoying while using the product? This is what usability is about in a few words, and it connects both UI and UX.

## What is Usability Testing?

Usability testing is a method of testing the functionality of a product by observing real users as they attempt to complete tasks on it. The users are usually observed by researchers working for a business. The goal of usability testing is to reveal areas of confusion and uncover opportunities to improve the overall user experience.

## What is UI/UX Testing?

UI/UX testing is a process of testing user interfaces and user experience for software products.

UI testing focuses on testing the user interface of the software to make sure that all buttons, fields, labels, and other elements on the screen work as intended when performing as they should and that users understand how to use the UI. Examining how screen controls, such as toolbars, colors, typefaces, sizes, buttons, icons, etc., respond to user input is a key component of testing user interfaces.

UX testing, on the other hand, focuses on how the product affects the user’s whole experience. UX testing is often used to evaluate a product’s ease of use. It encompasses all aspects of the user experience, from the layout and design of the interface to the way the content is presented. It can help identify any problems with the user experience, such as confusing or difficult-to-navigate menus, incorrect or outdated information, and slow or difficult response times.

## Why UI/UX Testing is Important?

Any problem that may occur with your product may lead to its abandonment, even a minor issue such as a lack of a button or a typing error can lead to a huge problem in the overall design

UI/UX testing is an important part of the software development process, It helps to make sure that the users have a positive experience when using the software and that your software is easy to use and provides a good experience. Also, UI/UX testing is can help to improve the quality of the software and make sure that users are satisfied with it.

It is a good idea to carry out UI/UX testing early on in the development process so that any issues can be identified and catch any potential problems early on and fixed before the software is released. It can also save you time and money in the long run, as fixing issues after your product has launched can be much more difficult and expensive and make the issues become bigger issues.

## What Are We Exactly Looking For With UI/UX Testing?

Essentially, User Interface testing checks how the tested product performs based on the following criteria:

**- Accessibility:**
The product should be accessible to the largest number of potential users. People with disabilities should be able to use it via assistive services just as easily as an average target user. People with different backgrounds and native languages shouldn’t have issues using your product either. also other groups such as those using mobile devices, or those with slow network connections.

**- Perceivability:**
To be considered perceivable, product content must reach users through the senses they rely on to receive information and all parts of the interface should be easy to perceive and have alternatives. For example, if an image is unavailable, it should have alternative text or a caption so users can understand what it represented.

**- High Performance**
To gauge the performance of your product, you need to be aware of the speed at which it loads pages and content, especially high-quality images. Text loads faster than images and illustrations, so the aim here is to make sure your product is in no way sluggish and loads within a matter of seconds.

**- Understandable Interface**
In an understandable interface, the content is readable – there’s no fine print or clash of colors. It also operates in predictable ways so users can avoid making issues.

**- Ease of Navigation**
Product navigation is one of the top factors to consider, when it comes to retaining visitors, keeping them engaged, and driving them through the conversion funnel. Navigation should be made as simple, easy, and seamless as possible so that users don’t think about doing something, but just do it. Poor navigation does more harm than good. It confuses visitors and sends them scurrying for the exit. When they can’t find what they’re looking for, you don’t get the conversion you want, either.

**- Responsiveness**
Responsiveness is all about your site working smoothly and cleanly regardless of the device it’s opened on. Your product should respond to the user’s behavior and environment based on screen size, platform, and orientation. This poses a website design challenge because most sites are designed with computers in mind.

And many other points that you need to consider:
- Consistency and logic
- Compatibility
- Learnability
- Operability
- Credibility
- Accuracy
- Efficiency

## How To Test UI/UX Effectively?

Though there is no ideal way for UI/UX testing, some of the tips for the best way for UI testing are as follows:

### 1. Identify What You Want To Test
Define the goal clearly, this will help you measure success and analyze results in the long run. What are you testing? What does success look like? You’ll know what to look for throughout the test and how to benchmark your results.

### 2. Define Your Users
Define your end-user, Business, children, elder, tech...etc. You’ll need this not only to design the best possible solution but also to source candidates you can test with.

### 3. Choose Your Method

There are plenty of user testing methodologies to choose from that’ll serve your needs, Whether you want to save cost or resources with unmoderated testing, or are striving to get the most qualitative and quantitative results with moderated testing. here are the most famous methodologies:

**Moderated:**
Moderated testing is when the session is managed in person or remotely by a researcher who introduces the test to participants, answers any of their questions, and asks follow-up questions. To set it up you’ll need to find time for both parties to be available, a place to carry out the test, and a method for tracking responses and results. These tests are usually held in labs and produce in-depth results but can be expensive to organize and run.

**Unmoderated Testing:**
Unmoderated tests are done without direct supervision and it’s more likely that the tester will complete tasks in their own environment using their own devices and without a moderator present. It offers quick, robust, and inexpensive user testing results to be used for further analysis.

**Remote Testing:**
Remote testing offers quick, inexpensive, and robust testing results that are most often conducted with the help of video conferencing software. This type of test is beneficial because it allows you to get feedback about your product from a large number of real users

**Guerrilla:**
Guerilla testing is a type of UX testing conducted in public places such as coffee shops or public parks. This type of testing is often used to test products not yet available to the general public. The ultimate goal is not to conquer your territory or to sell you a brand - it’s to see how a prototype performs in the real world.

**Phone Interview:** 
In phone testing, a moderator verbally instructs participants to complete tasks on their computer and collects feedback and user behavior. Phone interviews are an economical way to test users in a wide geographical area. Because they are less expensive than in-person interviews, they help collect more data in a shorter period.

There are more plenty methods that you might want to include in your test will just mention them:

- Lab Testing
- Contextual Inquiry
- Unmoderated Remote Testing
- Assessment
- Comparative
- Explorative
- Card sorting
- Surveys
- Tree Testing
- Session Recording

### 4. Record Scenarios
Make sure you’ve set up a method to record your observations in order to gain real insight into your users’ needs, behaviors, goals, and frustrations and share them with the team.

### 5. Analyze The Results and Make Changes.
By the end of the test, you’ll have a set of invaluable data for your initial idea from potential end-users and as you’ve set clear goals, you’ll know exactly how to measure success, be sure to analyze goal completion, to give you a rounded and strong data set.

## Checklist for UX Testing

Similar to UI testing, running UX tests entails examining a variety of important factors. here are some points to follow:

- Navigation elements, across the software and its sub-modules, each of which has several pages.
- Clickability of the header and footer buttons and calls to action.
- Redirects clickable elements and links.
- The performance.
- The software is mobile-friendly.
- The content of the product (readable and clear).
- Redirects Clickable elements and links
- Error and Success messages.
- Distribute the elements.

## Checklist for UI Testing

To ensure a seamless user interface examination process, it is typically desirable to have a UI testing checklist, However, when performing UI software testing, the following fundamental criteria are often looked at followed points:

- Positioning, length, size, alignment, and width of all UI elements
- Font Size, Spilling, and Typeface
- Icons and colors
- Required Fields
- Data type errors
- Data entry in fields for numbers, texts, special and invalid characters
- UI elements on different sizes of Screens
- Table scrolling
- Progress bars
- Action buttons (Save, Change, Delete)
- A menu drop-down
- Danger Signals
- Shortcuts and menu items

## The UI/UX Testing Tools

The following is a list of the UI/UX testing tools that commonly use:

**GTmetrix**: creates a final report for the pages, along with several recommendations for fixing the issues.

**Loop11**: is offering a very robust user testing platform. You can offer unmoderated and moderated tests within the platform with structured frameworks on different methods.

**Optimizely**: allows defining the conditions under which the income grows, registration, downloads, and content increases.

**Crazy Egg and Hotjar**: a heat map service that helps to understand how visitors interact with the website.

**BrowserShots**: this is a tool from BrowserStack is offering you to take screenshots of your website in various browsers and operating systems using a service online called.

**Maze**: is a UI/UX testing tool that focuses on prototype testing, offering integrations with major design tools such as Figma, Adobe XD, and more.

**Zurb**: helps to understand whether the users like your website design and what they remember after interacting with your site.

**UXPunk**: often used to understand the best hierarchy of website content as well as the most important pages that should be visible on your site.

## Can You Automate UI/UX Tests?

When it comes to functional and performance tests, it’s possible to achieve full automation. You may imitate user behavior or check technical data with automated testing to ensure each feature works as intended. In usability (both UI and UX testing), it’s all about human behavior. You need to observe how people interact with a program and how they react, that’s why this type of testing may be only partially automated.

For example, you may automate data input and analysis, with UX testing platforms and additional tools, and get valuable data with apps like Hotjar or User report, but you cannot watch real-life user behavior with any of these tools. So, manual tests are also necessary for usability.

## Tips to Help You Improve Your User Testing

Here are a few quick tips to help you keep in mind when thinking about UI/UX testing:

- Test as early as you can, don’t wait for fully formed products so you can reap the benefits of testing earlier.
- Mention your objectives clearly to the user
- Asked open-ended questions, no yes/no, or multiple choice answers. Start with the easy questions and detailed questions come later.
- Test with real users who will give unbiased answers.
- Observe behaviors and listen to the user.
- Don’t try to solve everything at once, fix the most important problem first, and test again.
- Engage the whole team in the process it will help them understand problems and what they’ve learned.
- Ask your user to think aloud during the test and observe their thoughts.

## Summary
UI/UX testing is your chance to understand how your users perceive and use your products. If you want to build great software, UI/UX testing is a must. By regularly inviting users to test your ideas, you’ll be able to meet their needs with actionable feedback, whilst validating your own designs, saving time and creating fewer headaches for the development and design teams.