[Podcast Transcript]

Welcome to Screen Space, your podcast about creating usable, accessible, effective, and efficient web, blog, and digital media design for the everyday (and non-expert) designer. This is episode 20 of Screen Space ldquo;Usability #38; Usability Testing 101 Part 6mdash;Analyzing and Utilizing the Results.rdquo; In this episode, I discuss what to do with the findings we gathered during the usability testing in episode 5. I will talk about collating the data, analyzing the findings, and utilizing the findings. While I love all parts of usability testing, I find these last steps, analyzing the data and utilizing the data, to be the most exciting. I love figuring out what the data tells me about the design and coming up with ways to solve the usability problems and redesign a stronger, more usable site or product.

If you have not listened to the previous parts of this series, you may want to go back and listen. I suggest starting with Screen Space 10 on User-Centered Design and then working your way through the series. In the first part of the series, Screen Space 11: Usability #38; Usability Testing 101, I discuss usability, provide a definition of usability testing, and outline the steps to conduct a usability test. In Part 2 (episode 12), you can find information on selecting your users for usability testing. In Part 3 episode 17 , I discuss the steps to setting objectives and selecting tasks to test. In Part 4 episode 18, I provide information on getting ready to do the testing. In Screen Space 19: Usability #38; Usability Testing 101 Part 5mdash; Conducting the Testing, I covered what to do before, during, and after the usability testing.

I am your host, Dr. Jennifer L. Bowie. I conduct research and have taught in areas related to digital media, web, and blog design. Previously I mentioned being an assistant professor at GSU. However, this is no longer the case and I am currently looking for a job in usability, user-centered design, and/or social media. Stay tuned and Irsquo;ll provide details at the end of this podcast.

A warm greeting to my new listeners from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Rabat, Morocco; and Utrecht, Netherlands. My apologies for probably mispronouncing your city names. I love having you here!

I also want to thanks my many listeners in Wisconsin who stopped by this past month. Your listens and blog visits moved Wisconsin up to second place based on traffic for the last four weeks. Keep coming back and you may catch New York, which ranks second for the past year. Georgia, my home sweet home, ranks first, both for the past month and past year. Thanks to all of you for visiting. Come on back, ya hear?

In this episode, I present the sixth step in usability testing: analyzing the data and utilizing the data. This includes collating the data, analyzing the findings, and utilizing the findings. I will use the same example I used in episodes 11, 12, 17, 18, 19mdash;testing a photography blog. Wersquo;ll imagine we have a photography blog with a decent sized audience. We want to get more users and see how useable the blog is for the current users.nbsp; By this point in the series we have figured out which user profiles we will test (part 2), we have designed the testing (part 3), we have prepared for testing (part 4), and we conducted our testing (part 5).

So, on that note, letrsquo;s begin discussing analyzing and utilizing the results from usability testing.

Collate the Data into Findings

First, we will want to collate the data into findings. In usability testing we often have two types of data: qualitative and quantitative. The qualitative data is not numerical data. It is data that is not quantified, is left up to interpretive techniques, and is subjective. In usability testing this will be the data from observations, user statements during and after testing (like those obtained from think-aloud protocol), user expressions, the interview answers, and some of the survey answ...