Let Your Projects Shine: Lightweight Usability Testing for Digital Humanities Projects

As the number of digital humanities projects grows, good design is an increasingly important factor in attracting and retaining visitors. Usability testing supports innovative design by ensuring digital projects meet the needs of potential audiences and users. Traditional usability tests can seem expensive or dauntingly complex, but lightweight usability methods can be applied to any project. Lightweight usability follows the principle that 'any user testing is better than no user testing' and is based on the idea that all you need to run useful tests with real people is a bit of planning, a laptop or tablet, and a couple of hours.
In this session, you will learn how to plan and run a lightweight usability test on paper prototypes or early versions of digital projects, and get tips for recruiting and rewarding participants for 'guerrilla usability testing'. At the end of the workshop we will put it into practice by devising and running a live usability test on a site suggested by the audience.