At SolidWorks, we never stop thinking about design. How can we make the software better for you, our users? How can we improve this feature? How can we make you more efficient? What’s the best way to design this? Will users understand this? Will it be discoverable? Learnable? Usable?
Every release we make hundreds - sometimes thousands - of decisions that affect your experience of using our products. And our best decisions are those that are informed by you. That’s why we strive to get your input in a variety of ways. We continually conduct surveys to collect opinions and ideas. We ask questions in the SolidWorks Community forums. We visit you at your work sites. We conduct alpha tests at SolidWorks World. We ask questions on Twitter. All of these things help us make sure we are making design decisions that are best for you.
But wait, there’s more! We also conduct usability tests on an ongoing basis, throughout the entire year. This helps us get early feedback, and ensures that our designs are on the right track to meet your needs. We start testing our designs early. By creating paper prototypes, we can get feedback before a single line of code is written. And once coding has started, we test our development builds as they evolve and take shape. The best part is that you can participate in usability testing our designs without ever leaving your office.
The vast majority of our tests are done remotely via the Web. A typical test lasts anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes, and is exploratory and free-form. You get to see new or improved features before they are finished, and we get to hear your ideas and opinions on how to make them better for you.
We’re always looking for people to participate in our usability tests, and we like to include all levels of expertise, from people just starting out to experts. If you’re interested in joining our pool of SolidWorks usability testers, please fill out our short sign up questionnaire. When your profile matches an upcoming usability test, we’ll contact you.
Recent Comments