User testing fast-paced projects

It’s very common to hear from clients or people responsible for a certain digital product that “we don’t have time or budget to test functionalities with users”, often due to the fast-paced and/or low-budget nature of the project.

The idea of user testing usually sounds like spending “extra money”. When we’re talking about an MVP it’s good to test even on the design phase, understanding user acceptance and compiling some metrics before spending money on development. The data from user testing, in that early phase, should be taken as a “GO” or “NO GO” in several projects. If an idea is already failing at that stage, user testing can save a lot of money in development. Another conclusion to take from failed tasks on user testing at an early stage is that the design itself can be headed in the wrong direction and needs to be reassessed. Again, this can potentially spare you from wasting resources developing something that was doomed to fail from the start.

But user testing can be cheap, easy and fast for those projects in particular. Of course, this rule doesn’t apply to all projects, but will certainly help those who, at the very least, weren’t “meant to be tested”. And the data can have quite an impressive impact on the clients! I have had clients that were shocked with how bad the user experience they had envisioned performed in testing. And that’s something you can also leverage when discussing way forward for the product with your stakeholders. Numbers matter a lot, and they can save you from hours of back-and-forth with subjective decisions based on mere “likes or dislikes”.

You don’t need to be a usability expert to perform user testing, though one can be an invaluable asset in getting the right metrics and evaluating the results. But if you don’t have have access to (or can’t afford) one, doing it yourself is still better than nothing. Focus on what specific user needs should your product be fulfilling and check if they’re being properly met. That should be enough to get you started!

Here’s how you can put together a simple and fast user testing plan:

1. Know what you want to test.

Ask yourself what metrics should you be collecting from users and in what way are they going to help with presenting your statements to your client, your project status or even investors. After figuring out what you’d like to extract, focus on how you’re going to get that data.

2. Create simple or more elaborate testing materials

You can use some drafts, wireframes or detailed visual design to simulate what your product will look like and how it will behave. The sooner you start testing the better, but the closer the interface represents the end product, the more accurate your feedback will be. It will always depend on what you want to test.

For instance, if you want to test the category sorting of a marketplace, you can even use a photo of your notebook and ask the users to find a particular category. You can measure how long they take to get there, or collect feedback should they feel like it isn’t in the right order for them – what would they change? But if you want to know if the user feels that your product is reliable and if they feel safe using it, you’ll probably need more indicators on the interface you’re testing. In that case you should maybe use a design with a more refined look-and-feel.

3. Choose an online platform and configure your tests

Maybe you just aren’t one of those people that likes to go to «the cleaning lady» and ask her to attempt some tasks in your designs or product. Fair enough… (she also may or may not be part of your target demo). You can do everything online, from setting up the user tests, to recruiting participants. It’s much faster than the moderated user tests. You can receive several user testing results in a couple of minutes! It’s that fast. It’s still more reliable testing «face-to-face», but that option can be too time consuming.

Here are two of my favorite online platforms for user testing. Only the first one can be used free of cost, but both can give you really fast feedback!

Usability Hub

This is the free one — until a certain point, of course! Do you have easy access to your target user? If so you can use this for free. Otherwise, you can recruit users that fit your target criteria for $1,00 each or 60¢ when purchased in bulk – very affordable, in my opinion! (Thanks for the heads up on the recent platform update,

!)

You can create testes based on 5 types of user testing, then share the link with them. The outcome of this is a report generated by the platform with feedback from the users, updated in real time as the results comes in. You can even share the link with your stakeholders to allow them to see the results in real-time, just like you. These are the 5 types of user testing you can do on Usability Hub:

• The 5 second test: An image is shown to the user for 5 seconds, after which they will be asked some questions to test what he can remember from it. This measures the first impressions.
• The question test: An image is shown and some questions are configured in order to measure the understanding the user has of the interface.
• The click test: Users will be shown an image of the interface and asked to perform a given task. They’ll have to click in the image to show where they would try to accomplish it.
• The preference test: This is used to find out what interface the users prefer, choosing from 2 or more designs made for the same purpose.
• The navigation test: A series of page designs are uploaded and linked to each other. With this test it’s possible to understand how users navigate to perform a defined task.

Usertesting.com

With a prototype link or a real site, users can be given a series of tasks to perform. Their screen will be recorded and they have to speak out loud what they are thinking at each step. Participants are recruited through the platform, but they’ll match the required user target criteria configured. This gives you a more “human” feedback than the previous platform (which just provides you some very objective results), but in turn it also costs $49/user and will require the analysis of each video for you to extract your metrics. If you’re not a usability expert, this may represent an extra effort and overall this may be out of your project’s (tight) budget.

4. Know how to choose your “victims”

Start by figuring out how broad your target user base is and if your co-workers, friends or family fit in any of the possible target criteria. I personally like to test with my colleagues from other projects at work. It’s fast and they fit in a lot of projects as possible target users. Knowing how tech-savvy they are, I know that if something fails with them it’s already gotten off to the wrong foot! I usually get a lot of answers in 5 minutes! Really! That’s how fast. (They are amazing!)

For more specific target users, if you don’t have any available, you may need to recruit them. But you don’t have to test with dozens of people to get your metrics, as incredible as it sounds, 5 users will be good enough for most cases. And usually that’s quite affordable to have in any project.

This study performed by the Normal Nielsen Group, proved that the gain of having more than 5 users tested isn’t significant and the findings will be pretty much the same with a smaller amount of users: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-many-test-users/

5. Check the results and take conclusions

It can be as simple as this:

• You don’t have the results you’d like? Go in a different direction and test it to see how much closer you got with the new iteration.
• You do? Keep up the good work! — It’s very satisfying scenario (I must say, as a designer!).

I even like to test when ai already know that the user is going to fail. Those numbers can help me argue why a design or product direction is better than another, when there’s no easy way of convincing the other party.

Ultimately I find myself backing up my design decisions with data garnered through user testing. Numbers are powerful, but they may need to be used carefully so as not to sound too aggressive to your stakeholders. Regardless, it’s a good thing to have at hand on those never-ending discussions about “why don’t we change the position of this button to up there?”.

To summarize, don’t let budget constraints be an excuse to avoid testing your projects before it’s too late. Don’t underestimate user feedback. Users don’t think like you do and what you think is obvious may very well not be so for them. It’s better to figure it out sooner, when you still have the time and money to go in the right direction, than later, when there’s no way back!