As a user experience professional, I’ve worked on small,
medium and large projects. I’ve learned that the smaller the budget and
timeline, the harder it is to include user testing in the project. Ideally, in
every project I’d love the opportunity to sit down with some users and watch
how they interact with the site since, in my opinion, this is the best way to
really understand how to meet their needs. Alas, I often have to skip over this
step and in these situations, I’ve always relied heavily on my industry
experience and expertise to provide recommendations on usability best practices
– I’m an expert, right? Lately, in the context of user testing, I’ve learned
some things that have made me re-think my standard set of “best practices”
which has really allowed me to understand (and now evangelize) the importance
of user testing.
Here’s an example – in the past when I’ve helped clients
re-evaluate their sitemaps and navigation, I’ve always considered it a standard
and widely acceptable practice to exclude “Home” from the navigation bar and
assume that users will know to click on the web site logo to return to the
homepage. Here are some sites you may recognize that follow this
standard:
In a recent user test on a site set up in this exact way, more than
half of the participants struggled to locate the homepage once they had browsed around the site. One user clicked the
Back button six times until they landed there! Now, I’ve really slapped myself
in the knee and realize that we just need to spell it out every time.
Not only does this demonstrate the importance of user
testing when you’re implementing a new site or redesigning, but it also goes to
show how we can continually build upon and re-think our bank of best practices
knowledge as we go through the user testing process. Can you think of any other
examples of how you’ve re-thought what you originally considered a standard or
best practice? Please share in the comments if so.
