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Finding Problems.<br />
Let's say there was a problem with your site that was stopping many people<br />
from looking at one section of it. You get by fine, because you designed it,<br />
but to everyone else it's just not obvious at all. How would you know about<br />
this problem? You might just assume that the section is less popular than the<br />
rest – maybe you'd even remove it or rework it, not realising that the<br />
problem lay in a simple layout mistake you'd made.<br />
When you test, you're testing for two things: firstly, outright bugs (things that<br />
are broken), and secondly, usability issues. The first are easy to catch on<br />
your own, but the second are considerably more difficult. Having designed<br />
your website, you're unlikely to be able to see it the way a first-time visitor<br />
would: just because you know that clicking an article author's name sends<br />
them an email doesn't mean that anyone else is expecting it.<br />
User Testing on a Budget.<br />
The chances are that you're not a big company that can afford to pay lots of<br />
people to test your site for hours on end. What you have to rely on, then, is<br />
pretty much your family and friends. If you do it right, though, they can be<br />
the best testers of all.<br />
First of all, you have to sit with them while they use the site, but make it clear<br />
that you can't say anything at all – sitting next to them explaining how things<br />
work obviously defeats the point, as your other visitors won't have you there,<br />
will they? You've got to make sure that their interaction is entirely limited to<br />
using the site as a normal visitor would.<br />
The best thing to do is write them a list of common tasks that you'd expect<br />
users of your site to want to do – for example, if you're running a webmail<br />
site, you could ask people to log in, send an email and copy it to your<br />
address. You should observe how they interact with the site, and especially<br />
note anything they have trouble with or do wrongly.<br />
Reacting to User Tests.<br />
Once you've watched someone try to accomplish things on your site, there's<br />
The Web Design Guide for Newbies |143
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