Learnability testing of a complex software application

Abstract

As part of a small team of user experience designers at an enterprise software company, we created designs for a full-featured business application, and included usability testing in our design cycle. As we delved into the creation of tasks, we realized that we needed to assess the learnability of our design concepts, in addition to their usability, to best direct our design efforts in the immediate future. We conducted an extensive assessment of the learnability of the application. Our testing included unstructured time for exploration of the software, participant-led training with a moderator who was knowledgeable about the software, repeated sets of virtually identical tasks, multiple breaks, and a lengthy distraction task. This testing method provided us with necessary information about which parts of the user interface needed iteration and which parts were learnable.