On the annual World Usability Day User Intelligence organised an open lab session for the web teams of the Amsterdam city council. The goal was to create awareness on the importance of Evaluation of interactive products in the product life-cycle. This session was the final part of a larger training course provided by Present Media. It was a big success!
26 participants with diverse roles in their web teams were given a short introduction to the ins and outs of usability testing. Once the basic principles were discussed, the group was split into three smaller teams and each team was given the assignment to prepare a small usability test for one of the many Amsterdam related websites. The three websites were then tested against the goals that the participants had set themselves.
Unsurprisingly, we had some people 'volunteering' to participate in their own usability test. As always – even in this forged setting – it was good to have the rest of the audience being confronted with how people interact with their product and content. "I will definitely have to change some of my link titles", concluded one of the trainees.
