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User Testing Articles & Videos

  • Involving Stakeholders in User Testing

    Besides usability specialists, all design team members should observe usability. It's also good to invite executives. Although biased conclusions are possible, they're far outweighed by the benefits of increased buy-in and empathy.

  • Testing Expert Users

    It's more difficult to conduct usability studies with experienced users than with novices, and the improvements are usually smaller. Still, improving expert performance is often worth the effort.

  • Anybody Can Do Usability

    Usability is like cooking: everybody needs the results, anybody can do it reasonably well with a bit of training, and yet it takes a master to produce a gourmet outcome.

  • Discount Usability: 20 Years

    Simple user testing with 5 participants, paper prototyping, and heuristic evaluation offer a cheap, fast, and early focus on usability, as well as many rounds of iterative design.

  • Guesses vs. Data as Basis for Design Recommendations

    Even the tiniest amount of empirical facts (say, observing 2 users) vastly improves the probability of making correct UI design decisions.

  • Weekly User Testing: TiVo Did It, You Can, Too

    TiVo ran 12 user tests in 12 weeks while designing its new website. As TiVo's experience shows, frequent and regular testing keeps the design usability focused.

  • Extreme Usability: How to Make an Already-Great Design Even Better

    The 1% of websites that don't suck can be made even better by strengthening exceptional user performance, eliminating miscues, and targeting company-wide use and unmet needs.

  • 25 Years in Usability

    Since I started in 1983, the usability field has grown by 5,000%. It's a wonderful job - and still a promising career choice for new people.

  • Bridging the Designer-User Gap

    Depending on how representative designers are of the target audience, a project might need more or less user testing. Still, usability concerns never go away completely.

  • High-Cost Usability Sometimes Makes Sense

    Computing the net present value (NPV) lets you estimate the most profitable level of usability investment. For big projects, expensive usability can pay off.

  • Multiple-User Simultaneous Testing (MUST)

    Testing 5-10 users at once lets you conduct large-scale usability testing and still meet your deadlines.

  • Should Designers and Developers Do Usability?

    Having a specialized usability person is best, but smaller design teams can still benefit when designers do their own user testing and other usability work.

  • Location Is Irrelevant for Usability Studies

    You get the same insights regardless of where you conduct user testing, so there's no reason to test in multiple cities. When a city is dominated by your own industry, however, you should definitely test elsewhere.

  • User Testing is Not Entertainment

    Don't run your studies for the benefit of the people in the observation room. Test to discover the truth about the design, even when user tasks are boring to watch.

  • Quantitative Studies: How Many Users to Test?

    When collecting usability metrics, testing with 20 users typically offers a reasonably tight confidence interval.

  • Outliers and Luck in User Performance

    6% of task attempts are extremely slow and constitute outliers in measured user performance. These sad incidents are caused by bad luck that designers can - and should - eradicate.

  • Time Budgets for Usability Sessions

    Up to 40% of precious testing time is wasted while users engage in nonessential activities. Far better to focus on watching users perform tasks with the target interface design.

  • Archiving Usability Reports

    Most usability practitioners don't derive full value from their user tests because they don't systematically archive the reports. An intranet-based usability archive offers four substantial benefits.

  • Formal Usability Reports vs. Quick Findings

    Formal reports are the most common way of documenting usability studies, but informal reports are faster to produce and are often a better choice.

  • Authentic Behavior in User Testing

    Despite being an artificial situation, user testing generates realistic findings because people engage strongly with the tasks and suspend their disbelief.

  • UX Research Made Agile

    Test early and often is a key recommendation for UX research. Dora Brune shares her approach, including regular Open Test Labs to engage more product teams and make user research more agile. Kinder Eggs make for a nice warmup task, even in remote tests. (Recorded at a participant panel at the UX Conference.)

  • Using a Translator During Usability Testing

    Usability studies with international users can be very informative, but if you don't speak the foreign language, you will need interpretation to understand the user (and for the user to understand you). These 5 guidelines will improve the value of translated research sessions.

  • Advanced User Testing Methods for Accelerating Innovation

    Two user research methods allow you to quickly test a large number of design alternatives, thus accelerating UX innovation. Rapid iterative design and within-subjects testing of multiple alternate designs aren't for every project, but are great when they do apply.

  • Limited Usability Testing and Business Decisions

    Some business stakeholders say that 5 test users can't represent all customers, and so it's too dangerous to release a new design. Better to keep existing workflows unchanged. How to respond to such claims.

  • Recruiting Expert Users as Usability Study Participants

    User research, especially for complex apps and domain-specific design, may require study participants with high expertise who can be difficult to recruit. Here are 5 tips for getting expert users.

  • Triangulation: Combine Findings from Multiple User Research Methods

    Improve design decisions by looking at the problem from multiple points of view: combine multiple types of data or data from several UX research methods.

  • Partner with Other Research Teams in Your Organization

    To gain a holistic picture of your users, exchange data with the non-UX teams in your company who are collecting other forms of customer data, besides the user research you do yourself. You gain; they gain.

  • Remote Usability Testing Costs

    We compare the budgets needed for different kinds of qualitative user research: in-person usability testing vs. remote studies run by software (unmoderated) or run by a human moderator.

  • User Research Repositories for Cross-Functional Teams

    Tips for placing all information about users in a single place, so that the entire UX team can leverage this knowledge. Eden Lazaness shares her experience and demos the tools her team used. This was filmed during a participant experience panel after a recent UX Conference.

  • Usability Testing for Content

    Usability testing can yield valuable insights about your content. Make sure you test with the correct users, carefully craft the tasks, and ask the right follow-up questions.

  • Comparing Qualitative and Quantitative UX Research

    Qualitative and quantitative are both useful types of user research, but involve different methods and answer different questions for your UX design process. Use both!

  • Tips for Motivating Stakeholders to Participate in User Research

    When stakeholders observe user research sessions, the credibility and acceptance of findings will increase. Since they are busy, make it easy to participate and work on increasing the value they get out of going.

  • Diary Studies

    Ask users to keep a diary throughout a fairly long period is great for researching customer journeys or other bigger-scope issues in user experience that go beyond a single interaction.

  • You Can't Test Everything, So What Should You Test?

    Nobody has enough user-research budget to test everything, so you must focus usability testing on those features that will matter the most for the user experience and have the most business impact. Here's a simple method to prioritize what to test.

  • Virtual Reality and User Experience

    Virtual reality (VR) user interfaces are currently more difficult for users to manipulate than a traditional GUI, partly because of more degrees of freedom and partly because VR is still new, so people have less experience using it. Advice for how to employ usability studies to alleviate this problem.

  • Running a Remote Usability Test, Part 2

    Learn how to run a remote moderated usability test. This second video covers how to actually facilitate the session with the participant and how to end with debrief, incentive, and initial analysis with your team.

  • Running a Remote Usability Test, Part 1

    Learn how to run a remote moderated usability test. Part 1 covers starting the session with your participant and observers.

  • Catching Cheaters and Outliers in Remote Unmoderated Studies

    In remote usability studies, it's hard to identify test participants who should not be in the study because they don't fit the profile or don't attempt the task seriously. This is even harder in unmoderated studies, but it can (and should) be done.

  • Can Market Research Teams and UX Research Teams Collaborate and Avoid Miscommunication?

    The total customer journey and user experience quality will benefit from considering market research and user research to be highly related, and to integrate the two, instead of keeping different kinds of research teams from collaborating.

  • Usability Testing with Minors

    Usability studies with children and teenagers are as valuable as any other user research, but require special attention to both participant recruiting and study facilitation. You can't act the same with kids as you would with adults.

  • 5 Facilitation Principles for Both UX Workshops and User Tests

    Both UX workshops and usability tests benefit when facilitators are focused on goals, follow a meeting guide yet are open to improvisation, encourage participants to act, and don’t talk too much.

  • Recruiting and Screening Candidates for User Research Projects

    Know the inherent biases in your recruiting process and avoid them in order to recruit study participants that are representative for your target audience.

  • Remote Usability Testing: Study Guide

    Unsure where to start? Use this collection of links to our articles and videos to learn about conducting user testing remotely.

  • Qualitative Usability Testing: Study Guide

    Unsure where to start? Use this collection of links to our articles and videos to learn about planning, conducting, and analyzing qualitative user testing.

  • 5 Facilitation Mistakes to Avoid During User Interviews

    Some common mistakes to avoid in UX interviews include poor rapport, multitasking, leading, insufficient probing, and poorly managed observers.

  • Three Levels of Pain Points in Customer Experience

    Pain points are problems that occur at the different levels of the customer experience: interaction level, customer-journey level, or relationship level.

  • International Usability Testing: Why You Need It

    User testing in different countries helps identify culturally specific usability issues. Testing correctly and at the right time will help you thrive in a new market.

  • Internal vs. External Validity of UX Studies

    Poorly designed qualitative or quantitative research may produce invalid results. Avoid encouraging certain responses or behaviors and make sure that your study conditions and participants are representative.

  • How to Test Content with Users

    When evaluating content, pay extra attention to whom you recruit. Closely tailor tasks to your participants and get comfortable with silence.

  • How and Why to Recruit Backup Participants (aka “Floaters”) in User Research

    Sometimes you should intentionally overrecruit test participants for one-on-one user-research studies. Backup participants must be recruited according to the same screening criteria and paid at least as much as regular participants.

  • Catching Problem Participants in Remote Unmoderated Studies

    Identify outliers, cheaters, and professional participants and remove their data from your analysis.

  • Remote Usability-Testing Costs: Moderated vs. Unmoderated

    Exact costs will vary, but an unmoderated 5-participant study may be 20–40% cheaper than a moderated study, and may save around 20 hours of researcher time.

  • Benchmarking UX: Tracking Metrics

    Quantitatively evaluate a product or service’s user experience by using metrics to gauge its relative performance against a meaningful standard.

  • Remote Moderated Usability Tests: How to Do Them

    The key to good remote moderated testing is to be thoroughly prepared and organized. Follow these 7 steps to ensure your study’s success.

  • Remote Moderated Usability Tests: Why to Do Them

    Remote unmoderated usability testing is so fast and easy that some teams make it their only evaluation method. But don’t shy away from its more robust alternative, the remote moderated usability test, which can give you more information and is also inexpensive.

  • Usability Testing 101

    UX researchers use this popular observational methodology to uncover problems and opportunities in designs.

  • Unmoderated User Tests: How and Why to Do Them

    The 6 steps for running unmoderated usability testing are: define study goals, select testing software, write task descriptions, pilot the test, recruit participants, and analyze the results.

  • Tools for Unmoderated Usability Testing

    Many platforms for unmoderated usability testing have similar features; to choose the best tool for your needs, focus on the type of data that you need to collect for your goals.

  • Setup of an Eyetracking Study

    If you’re planning on running your own eyetracking study, pay attention to equipment, supplies, and placement to ensure high quality data.

  • How to use Screening Questions to Select the Right Participants for User Research

    To recruit appropriate UX research participants, assess people’s characteristics without giving away the purpose of the study.