A usability study and testing of the Qtip.me website

This bachelor’s thesis describes and analyses usability tests done for Codemenders Oy, a software development company. The main objective was to evaluate the current user interface design of Qtip.me website from the usability point of view and suggest possible improvements. The study identified potential weaknesses and gathered feedback from real users, who volunteered to participate in a think-aloud test. The theoretical section of the thesis defines research concepts and gives an overview of the existing theory of UCD, UX and usability testing methods, where UCD was chosen to be used as a main framework. The document provides definitions of different approaches to usability, explains the importance of applying its principles during website development and presents both the strong and weak points of the two chosen usability evaluation techniques. After the UI requirements were gathered and a target user profile was designed, the empirical part of the project was conducted. The usability testing consisted of heuristic evaluation followed by think-aloud tests, and ten volunteers participated in the system evaluation by giving feedback and providing answers to a set of questionnaires. The findings of the research were analysed and the problems found were given severity ratings. Based on the collected data two user interface prototypes were developed and presented to the customer company. The objective suggestions given in this paper can be used for future development of the website