Testing

Importance of usability testing

The act of testing to see if a Web site works is mainly referred to as 'usability testing.' Usability testing is an important task to do, but particularly important for the Web designer or developer. For example, if you're the Web designer/developer and there are no usability testing for the Web site you just created then prepare for a rude awakening. As soon as the Web site is launched into the public you'll definitely here from people directly or indirectly involved with the Web site with a list of complaints. These complaints aren't just for venting, these complaints are for you to fix. This is such an important issue that companies have grown their entire Web reputations by solving Web site usability issues with test(s). A couple of serious names in the business are Jesse James Garrett, Steve Krug, and Jakob Nielsen. These people, like many others who focused on usability testing, have made their success in Web design and development just by merely testing Web sites with an eye for improving for usability's sake.

The main guy on UX

Where does this idea of testing come from anyway? In a nutshell, when a guy named Jesse James Garrett started his career in 1999 and when Web 1.0 ended (somewhere around 2004). When everybody and their neighbors wanted a Web site in a race for the piece of the American pie, Web sites were created, but with out the users in mind. After the Internet industry first bubble popped there were a slew of unfriendly-user Web sites waiting for someone to come to the rescue. Jesse James Garrett fell out of the sky and ever since he is known as the usability experience (UX) guru in Web design concepts.

What assures a good UX design?

Jesse James Garrett is the one person that really hits UX right on the head with his definition of user experience to mean, "the practice of creating engaging, efficient user experiences (19)." With the five planes that Jesse James Garrett has explained in his book, the elements of user experience it makes a concrete foundation on how to build Web sites correctly. The actual testing starts after the visual design is completed; the last of his five planes. In all reality, testing is really a plane all unto itself after the concrete has been poured (thank goodness it was poured because it wasn't poured before). If the Web site is not built correctly in the first place, how can it ever be tested? In other words, how can those crash dummies ever be used if there is no car to crash?

Kinds of usability test

Continuing to the crux of testing, testing is such an important issue that there are several test to go by. Furthermore, testing is so important that even just one test can make or break a Web site. So, here are the tests that we will cover in Web Sushi: User Acceptance, Smoke, Content checking, Alpha, Unit, Load, Functional, Regression, Security, Beta, and Release candidate to name a few. Also, not only are we going to explain these different types of test, but also we are going to give a couple test examples from experts if you're hanging from a shoestring budget (meaning little or no dough, like no money, no honey).