Usability Testing of Fruit

This week marks World Usability Day 2026, celebrating twenty years of the annual event. As the website highlights, World Usability Day is single day of events occurring around the world that brings together communities of professional, industrial, educational, citizen, and government groups for our common objective: to ensure that the services and products important to life are easier to access and simpler to use. … No one should have to suffer through products and services that get in their way. People should not be made to feel stupid by technology.

We agree with that view. Usability testing is an important skill for technical communicators. Through usability testing, we understand how the user actually uses the system so we can design a system that meets their needs. And a “system” can be any kind of information product: websites, user interfaces, instructions, and user manuals are all examples of information products.

One of my favorite examples of how to do a usability test is this video from Blink. While it’s a bit old now (2012) the video is timeless in how it demonstrates a moderator leading a usability test. The video uses a “usability test” of fruit to show the parts of a task-based usability test.

I love that the video also leans into the think-aloud protocol so the test observers or note-takers can understand what the tester is thinking. And it shows the first use experience for a new product, how eye tracking can be used in more sophisticated tests to monitor where the tester is looking, and the post-test questionnaire to gain additional insights from the tester.