A repeatable collaboration process for usability testing

Evaluating the usability of an application is a crucial activity in systems development projects. It is often done collaboratively, involving groups of current or future users, usability experts, systems designers, and/or system owners. The fact that such collaborative efforts require facilitation support presents an interesting challenge: how can a usability practitioner successfully facilitate usability workshops without being a skilled facilitator? The goal of our research was to develop and evaluate a repeatable, predictable, and transferable standard collaboration process that usability practitioners can perform and moderate themselves. We designed such a process and applied and evaluated it in a series of usability workshops focused on the evaluation of a telemedicine application. The results indicate that the process is promising in terms of applicability, productivity, and satisfaction. Also, the process appears to be repeatable and predictable in terms of the patterns of collaboration that it aims to create during the workshops. Further research is recommended to explore the process' transferability to usability practitioners.