* If you throw usability staff into the organization without the right equipment, they are going to seem slow, inefficient, and impractical.
* Get tools (e.g., lab equipment), templates (e.g., reusable questionnaires), and testing facilities. These items form an essential toolkit—the core infrastructure for routine usability work.
* Your toolkit makes it efficient to complete the methodology. To determine the toolkit you need, review your methodology.
A well-trained staff in a room with nothing but paper can outdesign a poorly trained staff equipped with a state-of-the-art facility.
The main value of facilities, tools, and templates is time savings. Instead of creating a testing form from scratch every time a test is needed, a usability engineer can take an existing form and modify it for a client's specific test in about 20 minutes. Creating the concept for a test and the forms from scratch takes days or even weeks. So, hire good staff members, and supply them with the tools that make a difference. This chapter outlines the tools you need, the templates that are helpful, and usability testing facilities that will help your staff be most efficient and effective.
Note, however, that by the time this book is published, some of the tools and templates described here may be outdated because new developments happen all the time. For example, you may hear that usability testing labs have recently moved from being "marginally useful in special circumstances" to becoming a practical part of almost every test. Or you may learn that remote testing, which isn't used often today, is becoming far more practical and therefore much more widely used. Remote testing is usability testing performed at a distance; the participant and the facilitator will not be in the room together (in fact, may not be on the same continent), yet the facilitator can still monitor what the participant is doing and saying. Because toolsets will likely change, a skeptical attitude about these tools is useful—if a tool does not really make a difference in the design, spend your money another way.
Introduction to Your Toolkit
Your methodology points to the facilities, tools, and templates you need. For example, if the methodology specifies that a test of branding occurs at a certain point, you will want to have templates for reusable questionnaires and a standard template for the final report.
If you update your methodology, you may need to update the corresponding tools, templates, and facilities. Also, new facilities, tools, and templates might lead you to change your methodology. For example, online prototyping has become easier, so you might move it further up into the design cycle. Or, as remote testing becomes more feasible and useful, you may add it to your methodology and develop new tools and templates to fit it. However, be careful about implementing these kinds of changes because some "amazing" breakthroughs are actually not that useful.
The following sections cover the infrastructure you should consider implementing at your company. They also explore scenarios and priorities for each facility.
Testing Facilities
Depending on circumstances, testing facilities can range from a simple office setting or a hotel room to a full-blown usability testing lab. You do not have to have a full usability testing lab in order to conduct usability testing. If office space is at a premium, the office of one of the usability team members can be used for testing. There may not be a one-way mirror, special equipment, or videotaping. There may be only a few chairs, a desk, and a computer. However, skilled staff members can still successfully create and run the tests. Similarly, it is quite acceptable to use a conference room to run tests; however, it is critical that the room be reasonably quiet and free of visual and auditory interruptions. For this reason, it is best never to use participants' workspaces for testing. You can observe them there, but workspaces are not good places to run tests.
There are a number of reasons for having a formal and dedicated usability testing facility. One reason is that designating a space for testing shows a commitment to testing within the organization. It is nice to have a room or perhaps a suite with that label, but this will not have value so much in supporting the work as in making a political statement. Of course, the facility becomes an albatross if it is not regularly used. Unfortunately, some labs left unused later become storage spaces.
There is a real value to having a quality testing environment. While the results of running tests in storage closets can still be quite good, it is best to have a testing environment that makes the participants and the facilitator feel comfortable and important. If you can make the test a relaxed experience, you will get more accurate and complete results. At the same time, facilities that feel imposing and overly scientific should be avoided—you do not want the evaluation environment to feel too formal. That's why usability engineers usually call people participants instead of subjects; no one likes to feel like a lab rat!
Facilitating a test is a very demanding activity. It takes focus, and it's difficult, if not impossible, for one person to keep the test process running, observe the nuances of the results, and record data. There is no additional energy or time left to greet participants, provide the initial forms, and give them compensation once the testing is complete. Therefore, it is very useful to have additional staff available to handle these functions. Professional testing facilities have support staff.
In some cases, you will need a facility that is geographically separated from your offices. You might decide to do testing in a number of cities intermittently, or you might even need to complete testing in these different cities quite often. In this scenario, it makes sense to have a relationship with a testing facility in each location. These testing facilities are generally set up for marketing studies, but they work well for usability testing. It is also possible to use a conference room in a hotel, but the testing facilities provide such valuable amenities as a greeter, a one-way mirror, built-in sound and video, and usually a more comfortable atmosphere.
Whether you obtain a contract with a professional testing facility or choose to build your own testing space, there are a few advantages associated with obtaining a professional testing facility versus using a simple conference room. Figures 8-1 and 8-2 show the appearance of a typical professional testing facility. Your facility may have a one-way mirror. Most people can tell when you have a one-way mirror, so if your facility has one in place, you should be straight forward about it. With a proper briefing, the mirror works very well. Developers, business owners, and marketing and usability staff can come and observe without disturbing the test. They can discuss what they see and send in their questions to the test facilitator. In place of a one-way mirror you can also use video feeds to adjacent rooms to allow others to observe without disturbing the test.
