Sometimes, as UX professionals, we must perform seemingly wasteful activities for the greater good. One of them is conducting usability studies when we can predict the outcome.

Usability studies serve multiple purposes. The most obvious benefit is to figure out how to best address user needs, by identifying those design elements that do or do not work.

However, an equally powerful, and often neglected, benefit to usability testing is consensus building. Usability studies are a persuasion tool. When your design recommendations meet resistance, it can be better to show rather than tell.

Why Conduct Usability Studies

Below are common situations in which you should conduct usability studies, even if you think you know the answer:

Build Camaraderie and Trust

You may know the answer, but your team members might not. They may come from different disciplines and lack the domain experience that you possess. If you are new to a team or organization, you many need to build their confidence in your abilities.

Usability tests are an opportunity to give teams a shared learning experience and to establish common ground.  The experience of witnessing people’s reactions firsthand alters the conversation from “what I think” to “what customers think.” In the process, you garner trust by making the research process transparent.

Teams that participate in frequent usability studies are more cohesive and successful than teams that don’t because their decisions are based on behaviors  witnessed together, as a group.

Usability tests provide insights that are the foundation of team discussions. When you make a design recommendation, it’s based on shared knowledge, not what some people might misconstrue as your opinion.

As a UX professional, you obviously know that your personal preferences are irrelevant for the design, since you’re designing to satisfy the target audience and not to satisfy yourself. However, since it’s normal human behavior to want to satisfy one self, you can’t really blame your colleagues for suspecting that this could be the motive behind some of your design suggestions, even you’re truly basing them on user needs and not your own likes.

Bridge Divergent Ideas

Divergent thinking can generate creative solutions. However, once multiple alternatives are proposed, they must converge to a single solution. While ideas are easy, consensus is hard. If everyone is right, what should you do?

Rather than participate in unconstructive debates over what’s best, test divergent ideas to get the answer directly from users. The point of testing multiple ideas is not as much to determine a winner, but to identify elements that work best in each design and consider them for future iterations. Usability studies can help diffuse arguments and set teams back on track because it’s difficult to argue with users. Let users be the voice of reason, your referees.

Manage Awkward Requests

Many UX practitioners have experienced the phenomenon in which an executive descends from the heavens with a wild idea and commands you to implement it. When saying no is awkward (or not an option), one way to mollify a tense situation is to offer to research the idea.

Let’s say the request is to build this new shiny app that you know will fail. A diplomatic response might be to see if you can gather data to support or enhance that idea. And in the process you might find an alternative solution that better meets the goals of the request.

In many cases, you can test the idea without creating something from scratch. Most likely the shiny app, or a version of it, already exists in the real world. Get user feedback on these existing designs. Usability tests often result in colorful user quotes and highlight videos that can be extremely compelling.

Avoid Delivering the Bad News Yourself

You might have a strong feeling that a proposed idea is terrible — if released it will fail miserably. No one wants to be the bearer of bad news. And people might not take your assessment seriously, especially if the team is far down the development cycle.  When we tinker at something for a long time, it becomes our baby. Accepting criticism is hard.

Soften the blow by running a usability study of the proposed idea. Allowing actual users to respond to the design removes the perception of subjectivity. Instead of delivering the bad news yourself, let customers do it for you.

Just in Case You’re Wrong

Even the best UX designers can’t predict precisely how people will respond to an interface without testing it. Having experience helps, but it’s not foolproof.

Even though I’ve been conducting usability studies for two decades, something new always surprises me. I’ve experienced situations in which I’ve advocated for a design changed vehemently, only to discover in testing that the issue was not as severe as I anticipated.

It’s not feasible to test everything, but when you have an opportunity to test, you should — especially in highly critical, low-certainty situations. In the course of testing, include other research questions that might help the team so you don’t feel as if you’ve wasted resources.

Conclusion

Usability testing is never a waste of time, even if you think you know the answer. Besides gaining design insight, use it as an opportunity to bring team members and stakeholders along for the ride. Show, not just tell. In the process, you’ll garner more support. When in doubt, just do it — it can take less time to run a simple study than the hours consumed by having a full team meet endlessly to argue over something.