ABSTRACT
Usability research is often used by general practitioners of technical communication as well as by practitioners who focus in user experience design. Usability touches every aspect of technical communication because the profession lives or dies based on effectiveness with the audience. Usability studies provide a rigorous methodology for understanding an audience’s response to a product or process. This chapter explains how one can design usability studies that are reliable and valid—in other words, good research. “Usability testing” is referred to as collection of data from users as they interact in an authentic way with the product or process being studied. Usability testing software such as Morae allows to embed coding scales directly into the test, including the System Usability Scale, color-coded symbols, and other rating scales. Questionnaires can also be very helpful in collecting data as part of usability research. A usability study might be constructed of multiple methods such as usability testing, heuristic evaluation, interviews, and questionnaires.
