Usability testing of the questionnaire and the online tool

• Pages: 39-45

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The testing phase st arted after the f‌in alisation of the

questionnai re, its translation and its imp lementation in

the software sur vey tool in order to:

•validate the system (i.e. su rvey tool and datab ase)

in terms of satisfyi ng the technical an d functional

requirements as well a s its technical reliability;

•test the software su rvey tool’s usability;

•test the question naire’s conceptual and cognitive

aspects;

•test the efficien cy of the overall system in t he

final deployment on the operational technical

infrastructure.

The aim of the above task s was to identify areas in

which correction, improvement, modif‌ication and f‌ine-

tuning were necessar y in both the technical a nd the

conceptual aspect s, as well as to ensure that no major

obstacle or risk were id entif‌ied and the sur vey could

be safely launche d. Moreover, the results of this phase

provided valuable i nput for future improvements of th e

survey, even in cases where no correc tive action had

been deemed necessary.

After the finalis ation of the questio nnaire and the

respective transla tions and their loading on to the sur-

vey tool, testing of usabi lity, usage analysis and cogni-

tive testing were conducte d with test users, which led

to minor corrections and technical improvements.

Before the launch of the su rvey, and after the deploy-

ment on the operatio nal ‘production’ techni cal infra-

structure, the in tegrated operationa l system (i.e.

servers, databa se, survey tool, etc.) was tested through

extensive simulation testing and load/stress testing.

5.1. Software development

testing

Unit and integration testing according to established

software engin eering best prac tices was executed at

several stages dur ing the software development ’s life

cycle. This includ ed:

•unit testing for sof tware modules (i.e. da tabase,

middle-tier components, front-end tool); unit test-

ing consisted of checki ng software outpu t for pre-

specified input corresponding to normal and error

conditi ons;

•integration testin g for the entire system, consis t-

ing of running end -to-end cases (i.e. from the user

interface (UI) to the data base);

•test cases referring to spe cific user requireme nts

(especially logic for bra nching and piping).

Test cases were specifically ela borated to test the

implementati on of questionnaire logic (such as b ranch-

ing, piping, rules for allowable options).

5.2. Tool usability testing,

usage analysis and

cognitive user survey

5.2.1 Methodology

The aims of this testin g phase were:

1. to test and validate the o nline tool’s UI usability

and intuitiveness to i dentify potential problems or

improvements in the U I’s design;

5 

Usability testing of the

questionnaire and the online tool