How to Conduct User Experience Testing Like a Professional?
Good UX design focuses on the interactive side of the product, how visitors behave, how they interact with it. UX handles content architecture, sitemap. UX is more focused on current tasks, scenarios. Let's take a look at a UX usability example. The website has various interface elements. Clicking on each of these elements, scrolling through the news feed is UX. A UX designer is the person in charge of logic, creating a logical product.
For this purpose - layouts, prototypes, sitemap. Research, competitive analysis, usability testing, A / B testing are also carried out. UX designers are primarily concerned with how users feel about a given product. If your website or application is difficult to use, then users will be frustrated and leave right away. The UX designer's job is to prevent this from happening. UX is based on three types of components:
1. Usability testing;
2. User research;
3. User needs.
What is Usability Testing?
Usability testing allows you to look at software/App from a user point of view. Inconvenient arrangement of user interface components, overly complex design, and severely limited functionality. All this is about how convenient and easy it is for end-users to interact with the software. UX testing is relevant for various types of software products, and quality assurance for each of them includes the following aspects:
- analysis of the compliance of the interface structure with business goals;
- evaluation of the first impression that the software makes;
- the study of the elements that most often cause difficulties when using them.
When to Do Ux Usability Testing?
UX usability testing plays an important role in every stage of the design process. From multiple studies, it is important to conduct independent tests that are fast and cheap at the right time, and the sooner you test, the better. Often, usability testing is usually carried out before development, in order to pay the minimum cost to make the correct design and to avoid making all the changes later.
During the testing process, if you find any problems, you need to adjust your UX design in time and wait until the final confirmation before giving it to the developers. Before testing, it is usually necessary to make a clickable "high-fidelity" prototype, so that every sentence, every button, and every operation the user sees is the same as the online effect, so as to simulate the real usage scenario.
What Types of Usability Testing Are There?
Using different classification criteria, there are several types of testing. In our practice, we use all of them. Depending on the degree of participation of the moderator - UX designer:
1. moderated - the moderator gives tasks, monitors the progress of their implementation, asks clarifying questions;
2. unmoderated - a specialized service gives tasks, collects metrics and feedback automatically, without the participation of a moderator.
Remote Testing
In remote testing, users perform a series of tasks in their own environment. The software records the process of completing tasks. The software automatically records the user's click location and interaction process and records what happens when they use the website or application Key events and feedback submitted by users. This type of test can be done by the host - using a webinar or it can be used as a self-test.
Face-to-face Testing
This type of test run by one or more observers in a fixed environment. Such as a conference room, or with small groups or individuals. Users are required to complete a set of tasks, and observers can interact with them at any time to ask questions or explore further.
How to Conduct Usability Testing?
1. Find Users
When looking for users, many people find it troublesome, so they ask people around them to perform usability testing, which makes it difficult to verify the design. The reason why we want to test is to verify whether the UX design solution solves user problems, so the test user you are looking for should be the user who has encountered the problem, rather than just bring someone over.
Then it is best to find people who use this product or App for the first time to do the test. Product managers, UI/UX designers, and developers cannot be tested objects. They are familiar with the product and have their own subjective opinions on the product. Their test result is meaningless. So you have to select a layman or non-technical person.
2. Define the test objectives/ goals
First of all, you should determine what exactly should be tested and which area of the application or website is in focus. For this purpose, user requirements and user groups are defined, ie the key data for the recruitment of test persons and the number of test participants. The content and the number of test questions are determined. A test should take about 15 minutes.
3. Prepare the test object
If a website that is already in use is to be tested, there is nothing to be done here. Often, however, prototypes are tested, ie as yet incomplete test models, for example in the form of click dummies, which - sometimes only represent part of the - interaction design and the flow of navigation. In any case, these must be usable and functional for the test.
4. Prepare Questionnaire
You can make a questionnaire to receive detailed feedback from users. This information is subjective and gives a good guide on how users use the system. You can use an online questionnaire or a written form. The questions should be relevant and easy to understand from the perspective of the participants and should be asked in a logical order.
The main benefit of the questionnaire is that the feedback is based on the user's subjective experience of using the system. It recognizes the usefulness and usability. It is possible to quantify this feedback and use specific data to submit a report, for example, "50% of users rate your site new page design more".
5. Create a test report
These findings are finally documented and passed on in a test report. It is also important to report positive findings here so that they are retained in the further development of the system.
Usually, the test persons are asked to say a few more sentences about the overall impression after the last task they have solved, or you have the opportunity to ask them whether there is anything that they would specifically improve. These comments often also provide useful insights.
How Do I Recruit Participants for My Usability Test?
When recruiting participants, it is extremely important to ensure that either real users of the product to be tested are interviewed, or that the test persons correspond to the potential users as precisely as possible. Otherwise, both detecting errors in the system and assessing its usefulness in realistic tasks will become difficult. In order to be able to filter this group out of the population, one needs some information about its properties. For this purpose, the recruiter should get a precise impression of what the product is supposed to do and what the area of application is before starting the recruiting process.
This is the quickest way to get an idea of the intended user group and any obstacles and problems that may arise. In order to narrow down the target group further, one should ask other company areas that have information about the characteristics of the target group. Possible candidates: developers, employees in marketing, or employees in customer support. If in doubt, it can also help to examine the group of users of directly competing products.
How Many Testers Do I Need in Order to Make My Usability Testing Gets Reliable?
The number of testers to be recruited depends heavily on the test method used and the goal of the research. Studies whose results are examined with statistical testing procedures require double-digit numbers of participants in each condition of the studies. A rule of thumb here is that it makes sense to calculate statistical significance from around 20 participants per condition. In general, larger samples can be assumed for quantitative methods.
If the goal is to carry out a qualitative or exploratory study, on the other hand, it does not make sense to test with as many test subjects as possible. Here it is expected that five test subjects per test are completely sufficient. These should be able to reveal 80% of the problems that arise with the product. With each additional tester, the added value of the investigation decreases more, as the same errors tend to be discovered over and over again. For this reason, it makes sense to end the test on the product after five participants and, if necessary, carry out further tests with a further developed version of the product.
How Long Does a Usability Test Have to Last?
A typical usability testing project, including preparing and writing a report, takes about three weeks. However, depending on the nature of the product, goals, and complexity of testing, business processes in the customer's company, the terms may vary. For example, some companies work on an Agile methodology, they do very short tests, taking 1-3 days to meet the sprint framework. A large cross-cultural research project can take three to four months.
Conclusion
From the project manager's standpoint, UX usability testing is one of the great efforts to improve product revenue. There are many benefits of UX usability testing, and users ultimately benefit a lot. Collecting data from representative users to help design decisions, fix design problems, and reduce or eliminate user frustration.
