Self Reflection

Lessons Learned

I would say that this project did a very good job of giving me a bird's eye view of industry practices in usability testing and analysis. If the previous assignments in this class taught me to look closely at products and find issues that might not be obvious, but certainly are problems, then this project taught me how to go through the process of finding and documenting these issues in a very organized and complete way. I realized that there is a whole new layer to all of the products that I see around me - the fact that engineers spend months designing these products to function is a lot already, but adding on the process of usability testing and alterations like this adds a whole lot more work into each and every product. I would say that I am a long way off from being an actual usability tester in an industry level job, especially a moderator type job, but at the very least, I did get a great idea of what would be ahead of me if I were to pursue this career path.

Final Thoughts on Usability Testing

I do think that usability testing and analysis is more important than most people realize. If we didn't have such standards in place, then the world of consumerism would look much different than it does now. Even with the standards we have, there are still many issues with products, physical and digital, that companies release today. For example, it is becoming commonplace, and even downright expected, for the biggest video game companies to release unfinished, buggy games, even though they have a higher budget than indie game developers who release complete packages for much cheaper. Unfortunately, issues such as these are on the consumer, because they are still buying such products, even if they are vastly unusable and outright insulting. The world seems to have gotten away from true usability practices, but it doesn't have to be that way. If more people educate themselves on the way things could and should be, then they could learn to expect more out of their products. Companies that design these products may eventually start listening to the consumers, and start to value all aspects of usability.