Optimus at VanQHere’s a picture of our own Anand Deb giving a brief overview of Optimus Information at the VanQ event last night. He then passed the stage over to the featured speaker Elizabeth Snowdon.

Elizabeth presented an introduction to usability testing and drew from her many years of experience. She explained the entire process from planning, to conducting testing, to reporting results. Her overview was excellent as she offered great insights into the process.

She explained the following benefits of usability testing:

• increased sales and revenue
• increased efficiency by saving time and money
• less support calls
• decreased training costs
• reduced maintenance costs
• increased customer satisfaction

She also explained how upfront investments in usability testing save money in the long run by identifying problems early. As we all know, problems identified during development are much less expensive to fix that after deployment.

The Q/A session brought up many interesting points. For example, attendees asked how to get senior management on board with usability testing. Elizabeth replied that usability testing doesn’t have to be a cumbersome or expensive process, with modern technology it can be done very efficiently with little more than a laptop. In order to get senior management on board, she explained that you could conduct a small guerrilla usability test on your own and present the findings. Once management sees direct feedback from users and actionable items to improve they’ll be more likely to jump on board for more testing.

Optimus is proud to have sponsored VanQ last night and is looking forward to next month’s event.