Task-based usability testing and performance measurements over the internet
Stefan E. Eng · 2020
User-centered design and usability engineering are two concepts that both roughly date back to the 1990s, and both of which have had a large impact on the practices of software-engineering and the field of software-design. How much effort is required to take these concepts and apply them, without much prior experience, to today's interconnected and geographically distributed working environment? Not much actually, by leveraging Python and Flask, this report demonstrates that it is possible for a software-developer with little prior knowledge, to build and deploy the functional foundation of an web-based usability-testing-platform, accessible through any browser, that allowed 81 participants to run a total of 698 task-based test-scenarios over the span of five days. Additionally, by conducting some initial interviews about current usability issues. Using this information as the basis for the aforementioned test-scenarios, you now have the building blocks for a online-accessible usability-testing-platform providing insight into real-world usability problems, ready for use in any modern software industry, such as game development.