UX design principles: Why should testers know them?
Usability is key to the success of an application. Learn what developers and testers should look for to optimize usability and maximize the business value of an application.
A well-functioning application is useless if customers hate using it.
QA testing is valuable because it ensures applications are functional, meet contractual requirements and generate a positive user experience. QA testers can ensure that the application contributes significantly to customer satisfaction by testing for fundamental UX design principles.
Applications built with UX principles in mind stand apart in a crowded marketplace. Users perceive an application as worth their time when they can use it to accomplish their goals quickly and accurately. Testing teams must incorporate testing UX principles in all phases of the SDLC to ensure a user-worthy application that fulfills the user's needs.
Why are UX design principles important in software testing?
UX design principles are vital to maximizing the value of testing for end users. Customers want more than simple functionality; they want enjoyable and intuitive products that save time and enable them to accomplish tasks without working around errors or figuring out complex navigation. QA testers who understand UX design principles can better detect design issues that negatively affect user experience. Understanding UX design also enables testers to provide more thorough and effective design review feedback.
UX design aims to understand and solve user issues by creating products that make users more productive and features that make applications more enjoyable to use. The purpose of UX is to create an application that customers find valuable and enjoyable. Testers can positively affect application quality by including UX-focused tests throughout the SDLC.
For example, teams add test cases for usability, accessibility and design consistency into existing regression and functional test suites. QA testing teams might also consider adding a half or full day of exploratory testing sessions that aim to ensure UX design principles have been applied appropriately within features.
The UX design principles inform testing efforts to ultimately improve application success.
What are UX design principles?
These top UX design principles can help QA teams positively influence customer experience and increase application success by structuring testing efforts around them.
UX design should be treated as a dynamic part of product design and development on DevOps-driven teams.
User centricity
When the purpose of an application is to enable customers to accomplish a task, then testing must ensure the product enables just that. Creating a user-centric product means the entire software development team understands the user's goals. A customer-centric application puts the customer's need to accomplish a task above design and technical considerations. For example, a design may be sophisticated or modern but unable to help the user meet their goal.
Consistency
In the context of testing, consistency refers to testing the application in a way that uses design and coding patterns consistently. For example, button locations and button text must be consistent across application pages and functions. Testing ensures that the same functional and display patterns are used in the same way throughout the application. Consistency improves user experience by preventing the need to hunt down changing functional buttons or tabs.
Hierarchy
Testers must also check for logical hierarchy throughout the application or product family. Hierarchy has two variances:
Visual. This refers to the layout of elements within application pages.
Information architecture. This refers to the site map or architectural presentation, including navigational menus.
Hierarchy testing ensures users can navigate through an application, including functional features and configuration settings. Verify that higher-priority actions display more prominently so users can quickly find the functions they use.
Context
The context principle in UX considers how each customer uses the application. For testing purposes, context determines what devices or other integrated applications the customers use. Testing how different environments, devices and supplemental hardware affect application performance for different users ensures a positive user experience.
QA testers who understand UX design principles can better detect design issues that negatively affect user experience.
User control
The user control principle ensures the user is always in control. Testers should confirm that users can back out of actions without error. Additionally, testers should provide users with options to undo, redo, go forward or back, clear and reset any action. A user's experience depends on the ability to control the application and back out when needed.
Accessibility
Accessibility is an important component of UX. An application's success depends on not only meeting regulatory requirements for accessibility, but also making it work for all for a wide variety of users. Teams shouldn't cut the application's user base short by neglecting accessibility. Test to make sure all users can easily access, read and perform actions using various devices and viewing options. The more users, the more popular the application is.
Usability
Usability is a popular type of testing that teams frequently dismiss due to time constraints. However, testing usability confirms users can perform tasks intuitively, recover from errors and enjoyably accomplish goals. Enjoying an application can be as simple as successfully booking a flight or posting a lab result from a medical provider. When users can accomplish a task without friction, user experience significantly improves.
There are also several UX laws that incorporate one or more UX design principles, including the following:
Tesler's law. This law states that every application has an inherent amount of complexity that cannot be mitigated. For testers, it places emphasis on reducing the cognitive burden of figuring out how to use an application.
Pareto principle. Also known as the 80/20 rule, the Pareto principle is where 20% of an application's features contribute to 80% of its impact. This principle might encourage testers to focus more testing efforts on the 20% of features that do the majority of the work.
Occam's razor. Occam's razor states that the simplest explanation for a problem is the most likely explanation. This principle encourages application designs to avoid cluttered menus, multiple tabs and complex navigational paths.
Doherty threshold. The Doherty threshold suggests there's a limit to the optimal amount of user engagement with technology that leads to a positive user experience. In some cases, less engagement adds perceived value. For example, development teams might purposefully add a delay to a certain function to increase its perceived value to the user.
QA testing teams must understand which UX design principles or laws are the most critical for the application and its intended users. Add testing for the UX principles and rules that make the most sense when testing all of them is not feasible.
UX testing tips for software testers
There are multiple options for incorporating testing UX design principles into existing testing strategies:
Use exploratory testing. Consider assigning one UX principle or law to each tester and have them use exploratory testing to review the application. Teams can document exploratory tests as user journey tours or randomly create them based on a tester's experience and application knowledge.
Explore formal UX testing. Consider pairing QA testers with UX designers or a UX department for formal UX testing. Formal UX testing involves bringing customers to a location to use the application. During the session, customers jot down where they have trouble and when they require support to accomplish a task. QA testers can participate by providing support, observing user reactions and trouble spots, or noting the defects users identify.
Run usability tests early. QA testing teams often develop a suite of usability tests based on the UX design principles. They should then execute these tests during functional testing and regression. Testing early keeps issues from appearing in a customer release or surfacing after the bulk of the design and coding work is underway. Unfortunately, usability isn't suitable for test automation, so teams should select a manual testing method that fits the QA team's testing strategy.
Understand the business need. UX design can fail to improve user experience when user research, product design and design decisions do not accurately reflect the user's intent. When the business purpose is not clear, the design decisions teams make for the UI are unlikely to serve the user's needs.
Prioritize the user above technical needs. Testing UX design principles can also fail when the technology features are more important than the user's functional need to accomplish a task. For example, where applications are already on the market with poor UX design, it's difficult to make adequate corrections to improve user experience. For example, a healthcare electronic medical record/electronic health record system uses a tabular organization for users to find and enter patient data. Many EMR/EHR applications bury all functionality in a maddening number of tabs. Finding exactly where a user must go to perform a function is complex. Once users have experience with the application, then they are reluctant to accept new navigational changes. No one wants to go through the learning curve again.
In spite of challenges, testing for UX is valuable to ensure applications retain a customer-centric focus. Additionally, QA testers who understand UX principles and laws maximize the business value of testing. The more a tester knows, the greater the positive effect they can have on user experience over time. Teams should consider adding testing to determine how effectively an application uses UX design principles and to help provide the highest-value applications to customers.
Amy Reichert is a 20-plus-year professional QA tester and a QA lead, specializing in test development, execution and management techniques. Her experience comes from a variety of sources, including ERP systems, architectural design, e-commerce and healthcare software.
