When designing a usability study, think about ways to find out if your content is understandable and actionable. To assess whether participants understand the content, ask them to:
- Think out loud as they complete tasks
- Describe what they’ve read in their own words
- Describe what action they would take after reading the content
Learning whether users can understand your content is a very important part of usability testing. But it doesn’t stop there — ultimately, the goal is to ensure that people will act on the health messages you have created. That’s why you also need to find out if your content is actionable. Use a mix of quantitative and qualitative measures — for example, you can ask participants:
- What they’d do after reading your content
- How confident they are that they could do what the content is asking
Qualitative measures like these also offer insight into self-efficacy (people’s confidence in their ability to successfully complete a task or achieve a goal). Self-efficacy is an important predictor of people’s ability to adopt healthy behaviors.40
