CONDUCTING A TEST #7

How to measure performance?

There are many ways to collect quantitative data. It should be clearly stated in the test plan what type of information should be collected and in what form.

Performance can be measured in many forms:

• time;
• number of errors;
• number of successful actions;
• number of tasks completed; number of questions asked;
• subjective evaluation;
• heart rate;
• number of references to manual/help desk; etc.

While these performance measures play an important part in usability testing they are considered supplementary to observations. The weight given to observations over other measures is a characteristic of usability testing.