Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium CanvasFlip

When I hear that teams are not doing usability testing, I wonder what they’re basing design decisions on. When I ask, I often get a mix of answers from, “The CEO wants…” to “market research tells us,” to “we brainstormed in a team meeting.” It feels to me like they’re guessing.

And then there are designers, teams and researchers who believe in usability testing. I have met and interacted with three kinds of user experience researchers —

The ones who believe that usability labs with fancy cameras, one-way mirrors and comfortable observation suites are can’t-do-without necessities for a serious usability test.
Then there the ones who do not belong to the first category due to the budget they are working on. But, they’re all the time ready to jump at the chance to use a lab when available.
And then there are the third kind of user experience researchers. They believe that usability testing can often be more effective and quick when the team eliminates the lab from the process.

By now you have already positioned yourself into one of the three. For me, I belong to the third category of UX researchers — not just that — most of my researcher friends share the same category. Today, more and more researchers are seen conducting ad-hoc testing in any space they find! So, may I comfortably state that lab-less usability testing is in-fashion and effective of course?

Well, for most researchers budget and time constraints are obviously parameters to be considered, but it is also about how they feel about people vs machines collecting data. Some are immensely passionate about face-to-face discussions with users, while some trust tools that gather user behaviour and present insights in the best way. This article talks about methods of usability test keeping in mind the budget, time and your way of user behaviour data collection.

Conduct and record a screen-sharing session with someone you know — Google Hangout or Skype is a good option. This straightforward method is just as good as a face to face discussion! One challenge is the internet speed. The person on the other side too should have a high internet speed. But, that isn’t a big issue when high-speed internet is fast becoming the norm!

This is how you go about it —

Get a screen-sharing software tool, I prefer free tools — Google Hangout or Skype mostly. The screen-sharing application is the most crucial component, since it allows you to see what’s on your user’s computer screen during the session, and what is he/she doing on it.
Do a pilot test before you reach out to your users. So for that, find a pilot participant. Grab anyone who’s willing — your coworker, someone in the hallway — and ask them to wait near a phone and a computer with high-speed internet access. Skype and Hangout do support voice calling as well, but sometimes the voice cracks and breaks, so it’s best to have a phone by your side.
Now call your participant and have them share their screen with you, using the screen-sharing tool. Watch them as they use your interface. Don’t interrupt them in the middle of tasks, even if they seem to be running into trouble or “going off-track” — it’s important to see where they get stuck. Ask open ended questions rather than throwing specific questions. For eg, you might ask, “What’s going through your mind right now?” rather than asking “Why are you clicking on this red button?”
Wrap it up. When you’re done, disconnect the screen-sharing software. Be sure to thank the participant and reassure them that you can no longer see their screen. If you’re offering compensation for participation, tell them how they’ll receive it.

With remote unmoderated testing securing a stronger position in the UX world, online testing tools are doing are pretty amazing task. One such tool is CanvasFlip. With these usability testing tools, you can create quick task based usability tests and efficiently measure the analytics on the designs. In addition to these, CanvasFlip also lets you create quick prototypes right in the tool.

This method does not give much insight on “WHY” people struggle with certain parts of your interface, but they do illuminate exactly “WHERE” users are going wrong. To know the why, you can ask your users to leave comments on the prototype itself.

I’ll obviously have to pay for the tool.. Isn’t it?

Well no! With CanvasFlip usability testing is free! That’s the reason I am talking about this tool in this article 🙂

What are usability tests with tools good for?

Figuring out whether your product communicates clearly.
Figuring out whether people can successfully use your product.
Figuring out which features are discoverable, and which are hidden or hard to find.
Figuring out where and why people are getting stuck in your product.

This is how you go about doing it –

Create your prototype for testing
When you are short of funds, I strongly suggest you to first make sure you catch all of the obvious design flaws like inconsistent labels and lack of feedback before doing any usability testing. (I often refer to these “eight golden rules of interface design”)

3. Make a list of your product’s top three goals, its top three measures of success, and the top three personas it should please. You may actually have many customers — the evaluator, the buyer, and the user, which may or may not be the same person.

4. Write down tasks which are aligned to the product goals.

5. Find users for the usability test. If you have a user base or you have a network that has people pertaining to your user persona, that’s a win-win situation! But if you don’t, it’s even better 🙂 Setup this usability test socially (in closed groups such as Slack, WhatsApp, Facebook and LinkedIn groups etc) It’s real fun and it’s super easy. [Here’s how I test my prototypes socially]

6. That’s it! Initiate the test and wait for the data so that you can analyse the data and take further steps 🙂

Finally,

Adopting to quick, cheap, and insightful sessions is always a bonus! Because, that’s when we’re able to gather a few insights in a few days rather than a few weeks, and so we could just do another round as soon as we can. If tests do not need labs and a huge budget, we can repeat the steps until we start to see trends.

All the best for your upcoming user tests 🙂

Lab-less usability testing : Quick, in-budget & “in fashion” was originally published in Prototyping: From UX to Front End on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Lab-less usability testing : Quick, in-budget & “in fashion”

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