How do you write a report on usability testing?

UX Design
Level: Mid

In general, your report should include a background summary, your methodology, test results, findings and recommendations. There are a number of report templates that you may adapt to assist you in reporting your findings:

  • Background Summary: Include a brief summary including what you tested (website or web application), where and when the test was held, equipment information, what you did during the test (include all testing materials as an appendix), the testing team, and a brief description of the problems encountered as well as what worked well.
  • Methodology: Include the test methodology so that others can recreate the test. Explain how you conducted the test by describing the test sessions, the type of interface tested, metrics collected, and an overview of task scenarios. Describe the participants and provide summary tables of the background/demographic questionnaire responses (e.g., age, professions, internet usage, site visited, etc.). Provide brief summaries of the demographic data, but do not include the full names of the participants
  • Test Results: Include an analysis of what the facilitator and data loggers recorded. Describe the tasks that had the highest and lowest completion rates. Provide a summary of the successful task completion rates by participant, task, and average success rate by task and show the data in a table. Follow the same model for all metrics. Depending on the metrics you collected you may want to show the:
    Number and percent of participants who completed each scenario, and all scenarios (a bar chart often works well for this)
    Average time taken to complete each scenario for those who completed the scenario
    Satisfaction results
    Participant comments can be included if they are illustrative.
  • Findings and Recommendations: List your findings and recommendations using all your data (quantitative and qualitative, notes and spreadsheets). Each finding should have a basis in data—in what you actually saw and heard. You may want to have just one overall list of findings and recommendations or you may want to have findings and recommendations scenario by scenario, or you may want to have both a list of major findings and recommendations that cut across scenarios as well as a scenario-by-scenario report.