Profession ICT usability tester

ICT usability testers ensure compliance with requirements and strive for optimal usability within the software engineering cycle phases (analysis, design, implementation, and deployment). They also work closely with users (analysts) to research for and document user profiles, analyse tasks, workflows, and user scenarios.

Personality Type

• Conventional / Investigative

Knowledge

• Application usability

  The process through which the learnability, efficiency, usefulness and ease of use of a software application can be defined and measured.

• Human-computer interaction

  The study of the behaviour and interaction between digital devices and human beings.

• Levels of software testing

  The levels of testing in the software development process, such as unit testing, integration testing, system testing and acceptance testing.

• Behavioural science

  The investigation and analysis of subject behaviour through regulated and lifelike observations and disciplined scientific experiments.

Skills

• Conduct research interview

  Use professional researching and interviewing methods and techniques to gather relevant data, facts or information, to gain new insights and to fully comprehend the message of the interviewee.

• Use experience map

  Examine all the interactions and touchpoints people have with a product, brand or service. Determine key variables such as duration and frequency of every touchpoint.

• Assess users' interaction with ICT applications

  Evaluate how users interact with ICT applications in order to analyse their behaviour, draw conclusions (for instance about their motives, expectations and goals) and improve applications' functionalities.

• Test for emotional patterns

  Discern patterns in the emotions of individuals by using various tests in order to understand the causes of these emotions.

• Execute software tests

  Perform tests to ensure that a software product will perform flawlessly under the specified customer requirements, using specialised software tools. Apply software testing techniques and tools in order to identify software defects (bugs) and malfunctions.

• Test for behavioural patterns

  Discern patterns in the behaviour of individuals by using various tests in order to understand the causes of their behaviour.

• Report test findings

  Report test results with a focus on findings and recommendations, differentiating results by levels of severity. Include relevant information from the test plan and outline the test methodologies, using metrics, tables, and visual methods to clarify where needed.

• Replicate customer software issues

  Use specialised tools to replicate and analyse the conditions that caused the set of software states or outputs reported by the customer in order to provide adequate solutions.

• Measure software usability

  Check the convenience of the software product for the end user. Identify user problems and make adjustments to improve usability practice. Collect input data on how users evaluate software products.

• Create website wireframe

  Develop an image or set of images that display the functional elements of a website or page, typically used for planning a website's functionality and structure.

• Execute ICT user research activities

  Perform research tasks such as recruitment of participants, scheduling of tasks, collecting of empirical data, data analysis and production of materials in order to assess the interaction of users with an ICT system, program or application.

• Provide software testing documentation

  Describe software testing procedures to the technical team and the analysis of test outcomes to users and clients in order to inform them about the state and efficiency of software.

• Address problems critically

  Identify the strengths and weaknesses of various abstract, rational concepts, such as issues, opinions, and approaches related to a specific problematic situation in order to formulate solutions and alternative methods of tackling the situation.

Optional knowledge and skills

Source: Sisyphus ODB