BIO

Rolf Molich owns and manages DialogDesign, a tiny Danish usability consultancy which he founded in 1993.

Rolf has worked with usability since 1984. He is the co-inventor of the heuristic evaluation method (with Jakob Nielsen).

Rolf is an experienced speaker. He is proud of having been been named “Teacher of the year” in 2013 by hundreds of his students at the University of Copenhagen for not just preaching usability in his lectures, but actually practicing it. In 2014 Rolf received the prestigious “UXPA Lifetime Achievement Award” for his contributions to usability, in particular usability testing, through his extensive Comparative Usability Evaluation studies (CUE) from 1998 to 2018.

Rolf completed an M.Sc. in software engineering from the Technical University of Denmark in 1974. From 1974 to 1997, he worked as a project manager and software methods specialist for several Danish companies.

In his free time, Rolf enjoys learning by struggling with complex modern public user interfaces like remote controls, licket machines, and check-out terminals in shops.

Workshop

Usability Testing – an Introduction

Abstract

Usability testing can dramatically improve products. It is an essential tool for uncovering usability problems and demonstrating them to co-workers.

This workshop will explain and demonstrate a streamlined approach to usability testing that you can apply to your own products. You will hear what usability and user experience is, and the important differences between them. The talk will focus on the popular “think-aloud” method for usability testing. You will hear about usability testing on a limited budget (“guerilla usability testing”), usability testing in agile projects, and how to “sell” usability to your co-workers and management.

The workshop will include demonstrations, short exercises and quizzes.

• About the gap separating great software professionals from most of their users – and how to bridge it
• Usability, user experience and customer experience challenges illustrated by examples
• What is a usability test?
• Demonstration of a usability test
• Usability and usability testing in the software development lifecycle
• Other usability evaluation methods: Inspections and user surveys
• How you can learn more about usability and usability testing

By the end of the workshop attendees should have a clear idea of what usability and usability testing is, and how it differs from classic functional testing. They should also have an idea of the strengths of usability testing, the potential pitfalls and how to avoid them. During the workshop, they have a chance to try their skills in identifying usability problems and writing usability test tasks. Last but not least the attendees will be encouraged to consider usability in their own projects. 

Anyone who is interested in serving their end users well. No previous knowledge of usability or usability testing is required. However, the attendees should be familiar with the basic concepts of software development.

Bring a notebook or a smartphone.