Nowadays, applications are used by users who are increasingly diverse and have different levels of knowledge; this makes it challenging to bring about interactions which are both easily usable and understandable.
The levels of quality in interfaces are continuously more demanding because we are all used to having daily interactions with world-renowned applications created by large technology organizations who set the standards.
The usability of an application is directly related to its success in terms of user adoption, retention and satisfaction.
Solution
Evaluating the accessibility of an application makes it possible to understand whether the solution can be understood, learnt and used by the target audience in a controlled environment.
At CalvisionIT, we carry out these types of evaluations by using an approach complementing heuristic analysis and real user testing. This approach allows us to evaluate the application against industry recommended practices as well as to analyze the dificulties faced by someone using the application.
Organizations who strive to understand their users and offer them the best experience perform these types of tests before releasing an application or when they add new functionalities to it.
Technical Details
There are two complementary approaches to evaluate the usability of an application.
USER TESTING
On the one hand, executing tests with a sample of users allows us to evaluate efficacy, efficiency and satisfaction while they interact with the application in certain testing scenarios or tasks defined for a specific context. This approach provides empirical evidence regarding the possible usability issues an application can have.
EVALUATION
On the other hand, heuristic analysis is a very useful tool to detect common usability problems with applications when using an evaluation team with a working knowledge of best practices in interaction design. It is an easy technique to apply and its findings are of great use to design better interactions.
