Usability Risks
This domain tests how you identify, analyse and use usability risks to plan testing. Items ask you to classify a risk, choose a mitigation, or say which area deserves deeper coverage.
What a usability risk is
A usability risk combines the likelihood of a usability problem occurring with the impact if it does: on users (injury, data loss, frustration), on the business (support cost, lost sales, reputation) or on compliance (accessibility law, sector regulation). Treat product risks and project risks separately.
Typical sources
- Critical or safety-related tasks with irreversible consequences.
- Novel interaction patterns or complex workflows users meet rarely.
- Mismatch between design and users' mental models, skills or environment.
- Accessibility non-conformance and procurement obligations.
- Low adoption, training burden and high support volume.
Using risks
Follow the ISO 31000 cycle (identify, analyse, evaluate, treat) and keep a risk register. High-likelihood, high-impact risks drive method choice: heuristic evaluation early, formative testing on prototypes, summative testing of critical flows, accessibility audit. Record how each risk maps to a test task so coverage is traceable. Treatments are design change, user research, documentation, training or acceptance.
Worked example
A medical infusion pump adds a dose-entry keypad. Mis-entry could injure a patient, so impact is severe. The team runs expert review with clinical users, formative tests with representative nurses observing use errors, then a summative test with error-rate criteria, and applies IEC 62366-1 usability engineering for medical devices. Reasoning: risk level, not convenience, sets the rigour.
Traps
Rating risks only by impact and ignoring probability; treating usability as cosmetic and therefore low risk; keeping a risk register that never changes the test plan; forgetting legal accessibility risk.