Usability testing for a design system

The goal:

Regularly gather feedback by conducting usability testing with people with disability using a range of assistive technologies;
Prioritise testing components that are based on the ARIA Authoring Practices Guide (APG) or similar guides.

Before the sessions

A good approach is to ask for a broad mix of

Pick a small list of components to test
- Non-native, APG-based, components
- New components since the last round of testing
Design and make some realistic, but not real, pages using the components
- Do use content and ideas from existing flows and pages
  - Don’t use lorem ipsum
- Do include footer navigation for the user to move to the scenarios
  - Don’t include navigation that take the user out of the test flow
- Ideally, a designer designs the pages, a developer builds the pages
  - As a backup, a design-savvy developer can build the pages.
- So include a handful of patterns that are widely used and/or know to be problematic, to gain insights to share more widely than just the RDS team
Confirm environment and access

Make a list of good and bad times of day and share with session organisers
Plan for time to review the script
Schedule attending sessions as a task during the sprint
- Aim for at least one developer and one designer
- Aim for a minimum of one team member per session