There is nothing more telling than taking a design or piece of software out on the open road. I have never run a usability test and not walked away with a nice little nugget of information. Sometimes it’s radical (“Crikey, we’ve gotta rethink this design!”). Sometimes it’s nuanced, (“Interesting, she corroborated what others have said but articulated it in a unique, compelling way”). And sometimes, it’s a hint of the future (“Did you hear his feature request? Maybe we should consider that for the next release.”). But usability tests are never, ever, dull.
One of the most successful usability tests I conducted was my evaluation of Lightbridge’s Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system. Lightbridge did credit checking for cell phone carriers, and, up until that time, calls were directed to a call center operator. This was the first time the company had experimented with an IVR.
There were many challenges around the new system, which included calls coming in from sales people standing at mall kiosks and, as an added challenge, many of the dealers included a high percentage of English as a Second Language users.
Unfortunately, I could not get direct access to the users, but there was no specialized knowledge required to use the system, so I rounded up a bunch of my co-workers and we all headed off to the mall to see how the IVR fared. I included several of my ESL co-workers as well.
While I had been concerned about the background noise of the mall, that proved to not be a problem. However, the system struggled mightily with people’s accents and we uncovered a second, unknown problem. There were several prompts that left users confused and caused them to abandon calls. I was able to articulate changes that, when implemented, resolved many of these issues.
As a result of my findings, we were able to identify clear issues and make concrete improvements to the system that improved the overall conversion rate. It is a wonderful feeling to be able to point at results that had clear, positive outcomes.
If you’re interested, you can read the full report here.
