{
    "version" : "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1",
    "content" : "news",
    "type" : "single",
    "title" : "User Acceptance Testing Versus Usability Testing…What’s the Dif? |Digital.gov",
    "description": "User Acceptance Testing Versus Usability Testing…What’s the Dif?",
    "home_page_url" : "/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/cm-topics-button-component/","feed_url" : "/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/cm-topics-button-component/2014/10/06/user-acceptance-testing-versus-usability-testing-whats-the-dif/index.json","item" : [
    {"title" :"User Acceptance Testing Versus Usability Testing\u0026#8230;What\u0026#8217;s the Dif?","summary" : "Building off the great discussion started around Customer Experience, we’re looking at the difference between User Acceptance Testing and Usability Testing.","date" : "2014-10-06T10:00:50-04:00","date_modified" : "2024-04-02T09:45:13-04:00","authors" : {"joel-virothaisakun" : "Joël Virothaisakun"},"topics" : {
        
            "design" : "Design",
            "research" : "Research",
            "usability" : "Usability",
            "user-experience" : "User Experience"
            },"branch" : "cm-topics-button-component",
      "filename" :"2014-10-06-user-acceptance-testing-versus-usability-testing-whats-the-dif.md",
      
      "filepath" :"news/2014/10/2014-10-06-user-acceptance-testing-versus-usability-testing-whats-the-dif.md",
      "filepathURL" :"https://github.com/GSA/digitalgov.gov/blob/cm-topics-button-component/content/news/2014/10/2014-10-06-user-acceptance-testing-versus-usability-testing-whats-the-dif.md",
      "editpathURL" :"https://github.com/GSA/digitalgov.gov/edit/cm-topics-button-component/content/news/2014/10/2014-10-06-user-acceptance-testing-versus-usability-testing-whats-the-dif.md","slug" : "user-acceptance-testing-versus-usability-testing-whats-the-dif","url" : "/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/cm-topics-button-component/2014/10/06/user-acceptance-testing-versus-usability-testing-whats-the-dif/","content" :"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eEditor’s note: Building off the great discussion started around \u003ca href=\"/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/cm-topics-button-component/2014/07/07/user-experience-ux-vs-customer-experience-cx-whats-the-dif/\"\u003eCustomer Experience\u003c/a\u003e, we’re looking at the difference between User Acceptance Testing and Usability Testing.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you develop software, you’ve probably heard of User Acceptance Testing. You may also have heard the term Usability Testing. Same thing, right? Nope. And confusion here can cause big problems.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"image\"\u003e\n  \u003cimg\n    src=\"https://s3.amazonaws.com/digitalgov/_legacy-img/2014/10/600-x-400-Usability-testing-NOAA-and-state-nice.jpg\"\n    alt=\"600-x-400-Usability-testing-NOAA-and-state-nice\"/\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\n\n\u003cp\u003eLast year I was developing a mobile game for Android—think Whack-A-Mole meets mutant veggies. Eight months into the project we decided to do some \u003cstrong\u003euser acceptance testing\u003c/strong\u003e to find some bugs before launch. We got several reports of the game crashing from testers, but we looked in the code and couldn’t find out why.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis is when we decided to do some \u003cstrong\u003eusability testing\u003c/strong\u003e. After conducting usability testing with a facilitator, note taker, recording equipment, and eight participants we determined that the crash wasn’t the issue. The spot where players had to drop veggies was dangerously close to the back button. Users kept hitting the back button by accident, causing the program to quit and make it seem as if the game had crashed.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUser acceptance testing dealt with \u003cem\u003efunctionality\u003c/em\u003e and showed us that there was a critical error with the game.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUsability testing dealt with \u003cem\u003euser behavior\u003c/em\u003e, and showed us what the true error was.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEach are similar but have very different goals. Let’s look closer:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eUser Acceptance Testing\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eAlso known as “Beta Testing”, is used to find bugs in a website’s design\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eUser acceptance testing is done near the end of the design process. It is generally used for the developers to prove to the client that the project is complete\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eUsability Testing\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThis method is used to test if an application is or will be easy to use for the end user\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eUsability testing is done towards the middle and end of the design process, making incremental changes to the website design when issues are discovered\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"image\"\u003e\n  \u003cimg\n    src=\"https://s3.amazonaws.com/digitalgov/_legacy-img/2014/10/600-x-450-UAT-Usability-Testing-graphic.jpg\"\n    alt=\"600-x-450-UAT-Usability-Testing-graphic\"/\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\n\n\u003cp\u003eIt is fairly common for people to use these two names interchangeably, which is understandable because there is overlap between the two methods. However, both methods are different and serve a different purposes.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"image\"\u003e\n  \u003cimg\n    src=\"https://s3.amazonaws.com/digitalgov/_legacy-img/2014/10/542-x-385-Usability-testing-vs-user-acceptance-testing.jpg\"\n    alt=\"542-x-385-Usability-testing-vs-user-acceptance-testing\"/\u003e\u003c/div\u003e\n\n\n\u003cp\u003eWhile we did lose time by not doing usability testing in our implementation phase, the real problem was found in the end.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI can not stress how important it is to test your product as much as possible. There is nothing worse than spending months (or even years) producing a product that no one wants to use.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eJoël Virothaisakun\u003c/strong\u003e is a graduate student in the Interaction Design and Information Architecture program at the University of Baltimore. He is interning with the \u003ca href=\"/preview/gsa/digitalgov.gov/cm-topics-button-component/resources/digitalgov-user-experience-resources/\"\u003eDigitalGov User Experience Program\u003c/a\u003e at GSA this fall, and has published several games.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n"}
  ]
}