Welcome to the Abcam blog

Recently, I've been visiting labs in the UK to watch scientists use our website. Thanks to everyone who let me come round, it was great to meet you. We call these sessions 'usability tests', which does sound a bit intimidating now that I think of it, but it's our website being tested, not the scientist. So I'm the nervous one!

We ask the volunteer/volunteers lab partner/boss/anyone who pops their head round the door to go to our site and carry out a couple of tasks. In theory, the most difficult part for them should be pretending that I'm not sat in the corner with my notebook. We also get them to 'think out loud' which does help drown out my scribbling, and gives us some fascinating (and often surprising) insights into the way parts of our site work 'in the real world'.

This is a really exciting process for me, and it always provides us with lots of great feedback. I certainly come away from these sessions with a lot of notes. And, just like the abreviews of our products , there really is no such thing as 'bad' feedback. We value all the information we get - the point is to make our site as easy to use as possible. And that means easy to use for ordinary people like you and me - not just the IT professionals who designed it. I'm looking forward to turning these observations into real improvements to the website, and keeping you informed.

At the end of the session after I've finished taking notes, it's nice to have a break and talk with the volunteers and to get to know about the research they do and what they think of Abcam. Some of them may never have used our website before that day - and then you get some scientists who have their Abcam posters and fridge magnets proudly on display! Hopefully this blog will be another method for me to carry on talking to scientists, so get in touch and let me know what you think. I'd love to hear your opinions and about the work that you are doing.