Usability Evaluation vs Usability Testing: What’s the Difference?
While usability evaluations and usability testing may sound similar, knowing when and how to use both can dramatically improve the quality and speed of delivery of your products.
Over the years I’ve noticed that the term ‘user testing’ is used as a catch all for any type of test performed with users. But, different types of tests serve different purposes and muddling them up can result in users being made responsible for design decisions. This leads to confusion and poor outcomes.
Good design requires skills, knowledge and expertise as well as input and feedback from users. How do we balance the experience and knowledge of our team with feedback from our users?
Let’s explore how using both of these activities strategically can significantly improve your product.
Usability evaluations
Usability evaluations are a structured assessment of a design or product by someone with expertise in usability principles. It uses a framework that is based on predefined criteria that leverages industry or team agreed standards and categorises areas for evaluation.
This process doesn’t require users. Instead, it leverages expert knowledge to identify and catch issues throughout the design process before usability testing.
Example
A design team might agree on standards like:
- Content should use plain language and be easy to understand
- Navigation should provide clear pathways both forwards and backwards
- Interactive elements should help users move efficiently through their journey
Using these standards means that you can highlight areas that need improvement and catch issues early. An evaluation also ensures that you’re not relying on users to point out issues that could be addressed sooner.
For a step by step guide to a comprehensive usability evaluation, check out Usability View’s framework.
Usability testing
Usability testing is about observing users as they try to complete tasks while interacting with your product. If focuses on actual interactions and identifying how users behave, where they succeed, struggle or encounter any pain points.
However, usability testing is often framed as ‘user testing’ which leads to poorly framed studies and less actionable and accurate results.
A usability test needs:
- A usable prototype, product, website or app
- Predefined tasks you want the user to perform
- A facilitator and/or observers watching the interaction
The facilitator or observers are looking for moments of hesitation, uncertainty, struggle and pain points that prevent the participant from completing their task. Even if a task is completed, these observations help to determine the quality of the overall experience and identify any additional areas for improvement.
When to use each one
Usability evaluations can be done on a regular basis as designs are being developed, critiqued and iterated. This is an activity that can be done internally or with the help of a usability expert at any time without the need for recruiting participants.
Usability evaluations should be done before any usability testing.
Usability testing can be done at different points of your development process:
- To baseline your current experience with users. If your product is already live, this can be a helpful activity to uncover any current pain points that exist.
- When exploring something new. During the design phase this helps to determine how a user would interact with it, any pain points that may exist and lower the risk of a product that doesn’t work well once it’s launched.
Conclusion
Each activity bring unique value to the design and development process.
Usability evaluations rely on expertise and can be done at any time, leading to improvements early and often.
Usability testing relies on observing intended users interacting with a product, surfacing real world behaviours and pain points.
Together they improve the overall quality of the product, reduce rework and produce more accurate and actionable insights.
Need Help?
If you’re new to usability evaluations or want expert input, we’d love to support you. Whether you're looking for advice or a full independent review, get in touch - we’re here to help make your product better.
