A Practical Guide to Usability Testing

I had Dumas (one of the authors) for a Testing & Analysis master level class at Bentley College (the semester before he retired; I wish I could have waited, so I actually would have gotten something for my 3000+). He was a horrible teacher, the worst in the program. Reminded me of Ferris Bueller's "Anyone, anyone?". I thought this book was redundant and not very helpful. If you already have QA experience, you'll probably find this book a waste of money. It's out of respect for Hackos' work that I'm not rating the book lower.

These folks know usability testing; they have a lot of experience with a wide variety of systems. Their backgrounds in linguistics and in psychology inform their process making it a highly effective and very user-centered process. This book is easy to follow and comprehensive. A great first read or refresher for any usability engineer.

This book is real thorough, right up to the point of listing suitable topics for small talk with your test subjects :-) If you are doing guerrilla usability testing, most of the forms and checklists in this book may be overkill, but there is still a lot of useful information... I appreciated a lot that statements are in general backed up with literature, not just common sense reasoning. The only drawback of this book is that it feels a bit dated (i.e. pre-Web). It does seem to have been revised and puts emphasis on iterative testing etc, but doesn't mention more recent techniques such as eye-tracking, or using the Web for recruiting test subjects or identifying potential usability problems via request logs.

This is a classic in the field, written by two highly-respected usability specialists. I was fortunate to read it as one of the textbooks in a class on usability testing taught by Dr. Dumas. It is a very practical book, covering planning, testing, and reporting the results. The strengths and weaknesses of usability testing are discussed, and there is some information about other usability evaluation methods and basic design principles.

This is a republication, with only slight changes, of the 1993 edition, so the technology and costs are not up to date. But it's not hard to think in terms of digital cameras instead of videotape.

Highly recommended.

This is required reading for usability professionals. It's a detailed look at testing, covering everything from test plans and lab construction to data analysis and how to handle unqualified testers who slip through the screening process. It covers lower-budget tests in addition to full-scale ones. It's clear that Dumas and Redish have loads of experience, and they're not shy about sharing it.

The most useful idea I came away with is that testing needs a specific purpose. You can't just test a system's usability; you test, for example, the navigation system or a membership form.

The only flaws here are a couple of omissions. There's no mention of testing web applications, though the principles covered here can be extrapolated to other purposes. And there is no mention of the ultra-cheap guerilla testing tactics. I doubt Dumas and Redish would approve of them, but it would have been very helpful to read about where these alternative methods were effective and not.

This book is a keeper. While my organization will not likely be doing full-blown usability testing for awhile, I'm now more able to evaluate and communicate with third-party testing facilities. And this book will influence all of our other evaluation and assessment testing methods.