Research / Usability Testing 

What is Usability Testing? 


​Usability Testing is allowing users to complete tasks with a given product to observe how users actually interact with the product, where they encounter problems and experience confusion. 

Types of usability testing: 
  • Problem Discovery: Most common type of test used to uncover and fix as many usability issues as possible. 
  • Competitive: Comparison of current version of product to a competitor's version of a product or a previous version of the product.​
  • Iterative: Testing a product when improvements are made.



Case Studies 

Workstation Serviceability
  • Overview: When IT decision makers research the purchase of workstations, a primary consideration is the ease of upgrading, servicing and repairing the systems.
  • Problem: Workstations had to be easy to lift, covers needed to be secure but easily removed, internal components needed to be accessible and well marked.
  • Methods: Iterative usability testing examined the placement of components, ease of cover removal, depth and location of handles, color coding of key touchpoints and ease of replacing or upgrading internal parts. 
  • Results: Through iterative usability and design, serviceability was improved and became a key differentiator for sales. Serviceability of workstations was mentioned as an important consideration for a successful 5 year contract win, valued at $125 million dollars.
Documentation Redesign
  • Overview: Setup posters are included with all laptops. The poster redesign project looked at all posters, to streamline the creation process and maintain functionality and ease of use.
  • Problem: Posters were different sizes, there was variation in content and content was not shared across posters. Our team needed to test the existing posters,  recommend and test changes to the posters and ensure that changes did not affect ease of use.
  • Methods: Baseline usability test, iterative usability testing and recommendations throughout redesign.
  • Results: Generic illustrations and reusable content reduced the development and training time of document managers.  The reduced poster size and weight, saved on ink, paper and freight.  This provided an annual savings of $3.2 million, without negatively impacting ease of use.
Streamlining Support
  • Overview: A Support Assistant is an application for your laptop and phone designed to help manage notifications, updates and troubleshooting for all of your devices.
  • Problem:  The Support Assistant was intended to improve the customer’s ability to maintain and troubleshoot their devices but adoption was low. Our team needed to establish a baseline, make recommendations for improvement and begin iterative testing.
  • Methods: Baseline usability test, competitive heuristic analysis, competitive usability tests, iterative usability  testing throughout redesign.
  • Results: The redesigned application saw increased adoption and decreased support calls. Time spent on the Support Assistant was converted into call center cost savings for an estimated impact of $25 million.