Your Brain on Usability: UX for QAs - Jessica Versaw

"The user" comes up frequently in testing -- understanding your users, their workflows, and ensuring users have a positive experience with your product is a critical aspect of testing. We ensure our products are easy to use and can handle invalid user inputs, however, many testers don't understand the most important aspect of the user -- their brain and how it works. 

My talk introduces testers to cognitive psychology and establishes how gaining a better understanding of how users retain information, complete tasks, and process visual input can improve their testing. 

Takeaways:

• Gain a basic understanding of cognitive psychology, and why understanding cognitive psychology is critical to thinking like a user.
• Gain an understanding of key cognitive psychology principles that impact product usability and how cognitive psychology and usability research has been conducted.
• Learn methods of testing that focus on product usability and accessibility, how to spot common usability concerns, and understand why those usability issues are largely universal across user personas.
• Leave with resources to further dive into usability concepts.