Usability project highlight: Amazon

Each winter, HCDE master’s and certificate students take a deep dive into usability testing and user-centered research in HCDE 517: Usability Studies. In this hands-on course, students work in small teams to design and conduct usability studies from start to finish—with real clients, real products, and real users.

Over the quarter, they define research goals, develop test protocols, recruit participants, run moderated sessions, analyze findings, and deliver actionable recommendations to their sponsors. 

For one HCDE 517 team, partnering with Amazon meant diving into an e-commerce challenge: how to help customers feel confident buying pre-owned devices. 

Amazon’s Certified Refurbished program offers products like Kindles and Echo speakers that have been professionally restored to "like new" condition. The HCDE students were asked to evaluate the landing page for this program and assess how effectively it communicates value, builds trust, and supports decision-making.

The team designed a two-phase usability study that focused not only on Amazon’s existing page but also included a comparative analysis of three leading competitors in the refurbished market. The team tested both desktop and mobile versions of the four websites, using remote moderated usability testing with participants recruited by the clients at Amazon. Each participant completed structured tasks while screen sharing, enabling the team to observe how they navigated to refurbished content and what information improved their shopping experience.

Their findings emphasized the need for stronger visual cues, clearer messaging, and easier access to the refurbished product experience. In addition to a final class presentation, the students visited Amazon’s offices to deliver their findings in person, sharing a full usability report and a six-page executive summary formatted to Amazon’s internal standards. The client team shared that they plan to work toward implementing several of the students’ recommendations—insights that may also inform future ownership of the Certified Refurbished experience.