ABSTRACT
Usability practitioners are supplementing traditional measures with value-based metrics and methods drawn from the marketing, anthropology, and psychology disciplines. Part of the popularity of usability testing has come from its ability to find usability problems with only a few participants. For usability testing, as with other types of research, it is nearly impossible to draw a random sample of the population. One of the early differences between a usability test and a research study was that the test participants typically thought aloud in a usability test. Synchronous remote testing is similar to a traditional usability laboratory test, except that the participant and tester are in different locations. Eye tracking has slowly become more prevalent in usability testing. The technology has advanced to a point where it is noninvasive and almost unnoticeable to participants. International usability testing follows the principles and theories of generic usability testing.
