What You Wish You Knew About Usability Testing with Frank Spillers - Chief Experience Officer @ Experience Dynamics
On today's episode, I sat down with Frank Spillers, Chief Experience Officer and Founder of Experience Dynamics, a consulting firm in Portland Oregon, focused on User Experience and User Research. Frank is a subject matter expert in the field of UX, and he joined the podcast to share with us what we wish we knew about usability testing. This is an absolute treat, and I guarantee that listening to this episode will give you a competitive advantage against most other organizations out there.
Frank got his start in UX back in the mid-90s working with VR. He worked through the dot-com era in e-commerce, the launch of mobile apps, and he's continued to innovate in the field of UX.
On this episode, Frank discusses:
- The relationship between Product and UX
- The two pillars of UX and how these two pillars play into the product development lifecycle
- The most critical aspect of what you should be measuring in usability tests
- Pro-tips on how to moderate your usability tests
- The value of "broken prototypes"
- How to handle users when they get frustrated during the test
- Why we need to leave emotion and visual or audible empathy at the door
- The "5 User Myth" and what nobody understands about Jakob Nielden's 5 User Model
- The benefit of larger sample sizes in usability tests and field studies
- What a usability test plan is and why it's critical to the success of usability tests
- How to know what tasks you should be testing for usability
Connect with Frank on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/frankspillers/
Connect with Experience Dynamics: https://www.experiencedynamics.com/
Check out Frank's "5 User Myth" Article: https://www.experiencedynamics.com/blog/2019/03/5-user-sample-size-myth-how-many-users-should-you-really-test-your-ux
Check out Frank and Laurie Faulkner's work: https://www.experiencedynamics.com/blog/2019/10/how-many-users-should-you-test-user-testing