User Acceptance Testing

Many products have a feature specification that must be implemented in a very specific way. The Usability Team can independently perform your User Acceptance Testing (UAT) for you and document results efficiently and effectively.

Our experience in testing products for their usability can be applied to the Quality process of User Acceptance Testing. If your product requires that its feature set and functional requirements be validated by an independent evaluation before release, we can implement your UAT testing plan, facilitate the tests, and analyze and prepare the results of the testing.

Benefits

Working with the Usability Team to complete your User Acceptance Testing ensures an independent, thorough, and domain-specific validation of your product's feature set or functional requirements. We work with you to recruit representative users, to set up a realistic environment in which to complete the testing, and to ensure that your testing plan will touch on all key areas of functionality. We deliver the results of the testing efficiently, and can even help you input the results into your Quality Assurance tracking system.

Defined

User Acceptance Testing is an evaluative process intended to confirm that an addition or modification to a product meets the functional requirement which predicated the change. User Acceptance Testing, or UAT, is a common requirement of custom or outsourced development contracts, mission-critical application development, or development of mandated workplace applications. UAT involves development of a testing plan, execution of the tests by actual users of the product, and finally documentation of any issues found, such as bugs, crashes, or missing functionality. The purpose of UAT is to give the purchasers or users of a product confidence that they system or product will perform as per specification when put into production.

How Long Does it Take?

An expert review takes as much time as your product is complex. Using a website as a metaphor, we might measure this in "number of screens". A typical review proceeds using the following timeline:

• Kickoff (1-2 days): gather basic details about system to be reviewed, define any specific focus areas, install or gain access to system to be tested.
• Review (2-4 days): work through system, gather data, determine value-at-risk.
• Report (1-2 days): document findings, author recommendations, conceive next steps, and develop report and executive presentation.

Phase

User Acceptance Testing typically takes place in the Deploy Phase, as one of the final steps before a product is launched or shipped.

Questions Answered

The most important questions that User Acceptance Testing answers are:

• Does my product do everything it's supposed to? - By validating your features specification and functional requirements, UAT ensures that your product will meet its initial specifications, and will be free of bugs and other functional defects.
• Will users be able to use my product? - Besides the quality component to UAT, the testing also validates the usability of key workflows, the accessibility of key features, and the general usefulness of the product. It is not a replacement for traditional usability testing, but it can help improve a product's usability.

The Usefulness Characteristic

User Acceptance Testing primarily augments the Quality component of the Usefulness Characteristic by validating functionality and identifying bugs and other issues. However, it can also find usability defects that might not have been detected in traditional usability testing. This is because UAT is exhaustive and focuses on the entire product, not just specific focus areas like some usability tests.