Usability Testing for Cloud Applications...in the Cloud

Testing your web applications for usability is a very useful thing to do. Even if you have a vast array of user tests and automated regression tests for your cloud application, it is hard to know if your application is usable? Why?

• Most small cloud application development shops do not have usability designers available to ensure that the application is usable. And engineers are famously unpredictable in designing usable software.
• Over time, Most people intimately involved with developing the application become blind to the usability defects of the application because they figure out ways to get around it. Your paying customers won't be so forgiving. 
• User-testing can be time-consuming and expensive. You have to get users who don't know the application, give them a set of tasks, and then capture their thoughts as they go through the tasks.

There is a company that offers offers usability testing "in the cloud". Here is what you do:

1. Publish your application or a prototype on the web. 
2. Write down about 10 minutes worth of tasks on an instruction sheet for your user to perform. The tasks should say what to do, and not so much how to do it. In a usable web application, the user should be able to figure out the "how" from the "what". 
3. Go to www.usertesting.com. Sign up. Pay. Register your job, including any URLs, login instructions, and possibly other particulars.  It cost $39 per user per user-job, and good user testing practice suggests that you should get at least 3 users per job for effective testing.
4. Usertesting.com has freelance testers who will test your application. The testing session (about 15 minutes) is captured in a video screencast.  They will also write comments about your application. They upload their screencast and comments with the video. 
5. You then download their videos and listen them think out loud as they use your software. 
6. Once you have recovered from the shock and humiliation, take feedback from these users and fix your usability problems. 
7. Retest. 

Usertesting.com provides a useful service to cloud application producers because the cloud application producers don't have to keep usability testers on staff. They only have to buy testing services on demand. A moderately well tested application (for usability) is possible at usertesting.com at a small fraction of what it would cost to keep usability testers on staff or what it would cost to bring in testers for usability testing sessions.