PRESENTATION ON

USABILITY AND DOCUMENTATION TESTING

HIGHLIGHTS
 What usability testing involves ?
 What to look for when testing a user interface ?
 What special usability features are needed by the
disabled ?
 User interface testing
What makes a good user interface ?

 Standards and guidelines

 Intuitive
 Consistent
 Flexible
 Comfortable
 Correct
 Useful
Standards and Guidelines
 Follow standards and guidelines developed by
experts in software usability
 Has a really good reason not to follow
 Software look and feel to the user
 Existing platforms such as windows and mac os
has set of standards which you have to follow if
you are making the software for them
Intuitive
 Intuittive
 The computers with the most intuitive UIs are the ones
that people don’t even realize they’re using
 When testing UI, consider following things
 Is the user interface clean, unobtrusive, not busy ?
 Is the UI organized and laid out well ?
 Is there excessive functionality ?
 If all else fails, does the help system really help you ?
Consistent
 Consistency
 Consistancy whithin your software and with other
software is a key attribute
 Users developes habits and expect that if they do
something a certain way in one program , another will do
the same operation the same way
 Few basic items as you review your product
 Shortcut keys and menu selections
 Terminology and naming
 Audience
 Placement for buttons
Flexible
 Flexibility
 Users should have enough choices to allow them to
select what they want to do and how they want to do it
 Ex – windows calculator has two views: statdard &
scientific
 Characteristics of flexibility
 State jumping
 State termination and skipping
 Data input and output
Comfortable
 Comfortable
 Software should be comfortable to use
 It’s pretty touchy-feely concept
 It’s difficult to quantify
 Things that gives better idea to identify good and
bad software comfort
 Appropriateness
 Error handling
 Performance
Correctness
 Correctness
 Testing for correctness means testing whether the UI
does what it’s supposed to do
 For correctness testing we should have to pay
attention to some of following areas
 Marketing differences
 Language and spelling
 Bad media
 WYSIWYG( what you see is what you get )
Useful
 Usefulness
 Here your are not concerned with whether the software
itself is useful, just whether the perticular feature is
 The term “Dancing Bolonga” describes
unnecessary or gratuitous features
 Usefulness testing
Testing for the Disabled
Types of disabilities
 Visual impairments

 Color blindness, dim vision, tunnel vision, blurry

vision, extreme near and far sightedness and cataracts
are examples of visual impairments
 Hearing impairments
 Partially or completely deaf
 Have problemes hearing certain frequencies or picking
a specific sound out of background noise
continued
 Motion impairments
 Disease or injury can cause a person to lose fine gross,
or total motror control of his hands or arms
 Such deficulty causes person not to use keyboard
properly
 Cognitive and language
 Dyselxia and memory problems makes difficult for the
person to use complex user interface
Accessibility features in software
Software can be made accessible in one of two ways
 Using advantage of support built into its platform

or operating system
 Ex- widows, mac os, linux all supports accessibility to
some degree
 Here software needs to adhere to platform’s standards
 Having its own accessibility features specified,
programmed and tested
Window accessibility features
 stickysKyes
 Allows the Shift, Ctrl, or Alt keys to stay in effect
untill next key is pressed
 FilterKeys
 Pervents brief, repeated keystrokes from being
recognized
 ToggleKeys
 Playes tones when Caps Lock, Scroll Lock, or Num
Lock keyboard modes are enabled
continued
 SoundSentry
 Creates a visual warning whenever the system generates a
sound
 ShowSound
 Tell program to display caption for any sound or speech
they make
 High Contrast
 Sets up the screen with color and fonts designed to be read
by the visually impaired
 Mouse keys
 Allows of keyboard keys instead of the mouse to navigate
 Documentation Testing
 Types of documentation
 Importance of documentation testing
 What to look for When reviewing documentation
 Realities of documentation testing
Types of software documentation
 Packaging text and graphics
 Marketing material, ads, and other inserts
 Warranty/Registration
 EULA ( End User License Agreement)
 Labels and stickers
continued
 Installation and setup instructions
 User’s mannual
 Online help
 Tutorials, wizards, and Training
 Samples, examples, and templates
 Error messages
Importance of documentation
testing
 It improves usability
 Usability is related to documentation
 It improves reliability
 Shows the stability and consistancy of the software
 Shows Does it do what the user expects and when he
expects ?
 It lowers support costs
 Good documentation will prevent customer’s call by
adequately explaining and leading users through difficult
areas
Documentation testing checklist
 General areas
 Audience
 Terminology
 Content and subject matter
 Correctness
 Just the facts
 Step by step
 Figures and captures
 Samples and examples
 Spelling and grammar
Realities of documentation testing
 Gets least attention, budget, and resources
 Most of the times the people writing the
documentation aren’t experts in what the software
does
 As printed documentation takes time to produce, it
becomes difficult to reflect last-minute changes in
software to it
THANK YOU