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264 CHAPTER 10 Usability testing

be easy to activate features by accident (e.g. holding the smartphone in your hand and
hitting a button; or making a call, putting the phone up to your face, and accidentally
selecting a feature).
All of these approaches to usability testing have one basic goal: to improve the
quality of an interface by finding flaws-areas of the interface that need improvement.
While usability testing should discover interface flaws that cause problems for users,
at the same time, we want to discover what is working well with an interface design,
so that we make sure to keep those features in place! What’s an interface flaw? It is
some aspect, some component, some widget of the interface that is confusing, mis-
leading, or generally suboptimal. It is not about style or color preferences. Someone
may prefer dark blue text instead of black text, on a white background and that’s fine.
It becomes a usability problem only when you have white, yellow, orange, or red text
on a white background, all of which are hard for the eye to perceive. When we talk
about usability testing, we are talking about discovering interface flaws that cause
problems for a majority of people. Figure 10.1 gives an example of an interface that
has a major flaw. The screen shot shows the process of checking in online for an air-
line flight. Once you enter your information, the website asks if you would like to up-
grade your seat to the class called “economy plus.” Typically, most individuals would
not want to upgrade. However, the user’s eye naturally goes to the large yellow arrow

FIGURE 10.1
An airline check-in screen with at least one clear usability flaw.
Source: www.ua2go.com.