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User Testing Articles & Videos

  • When to Use Which User-Experience Research Methods

    Modern day UX research methods answer a wide range of questions. To know when to use which method, each of 20 methods is mapped across 3 dimensions and over time within a typical product-development process.

  • Demonstrate Thinking Aloud by Showing Users a Video

    Show a 1-minute demo video to your test participants to teach them how to think aloud in a usability study and give you more useful information.

  • UX Without User Research Is Not UX

    UX teams are responsible for creating desirable experiences for users. Yet many organizations fail to include users in the development process. Without customer input, organizations risk creating interfaces that fail.

  • Usability Testing for Mobile Is Easy

    Testing phones, tablets, or other mobile devices with real users requires special consideration for recording equipment, room setup, and even the test users.

  • Talking with Participants During a Usability Test

    Talk less and learn more by being prepared to use 3 sound, practical techniques for interrupting or answering users while facilitating a usability test or other behavioral research study.

  • Turn User Goals into Task Scenarios for Usability Testing

    Guidelines for usability test tasks: engage participants by writing task scenarios that are realistic, encourage an action, and don’t give away how the interface should be used.

  • Competitive Usability Evaluations: Learning from Your Competition

    Data on what works well or poorly on other sites saves you from implementing useless features and guides UX investments to features that your users need.

  • How to Run a Usability Test with Users Who Are on Your Site Now

    Learn how to use tools like ethnio and GoToMeeting to recruit participants while they’re on your site and immediately run moderated usability studies.

  • Remote Usability Tests: Moderated and Unmoderated

    Remote usability testing allows you to get customer insights when travel budgets are small, timeframes are tight, or test participants are hard to find.

  • Making Usability Findings Actionable: 5 Tips for Writing Better Reports

    For usability testing to be valuable, study findings must clearly identify issues and help the team move toward design solutions.

  • Flexible Usability Testing: 10 Tips to Make Your Sessions Adapt to Your Clients’ Needs

    For testing assignments where client teams are ready, willing and able to take immediate action, being flexible with tasks within and between participants can offer better bang for your buck.

  • Traveling Usability Lab

    User testing can be done anywhere; witness our international studies, carried out with equipment that fit in a carry-on bag.

  • How Many Test Users in a Usability Study?

    The answer is 5, except when it's not. Most arguments for using more test participants are wrong, but some tests should be bigger and some smaller.

  • A/B Testing, Usability Engineering, Radical Innovation: What Pays Best?

    3 approaches to better design: each has its uses, but the costs, benefits, and risks differ dramatically.

  • Thinking Aloud: The #1 Usability Tool

    Simple usability tests where users think out loud are cheap, robust, flexible, and easy to learn. Thinking aloud should be the first tool in your UX toolbox, even though it entails some risks and doesn't solve all problems.

  • Usability 101: Introduction to Usability

    What is usability? How, when, and where to improve it? Why should you care? Overview answers basic questions + how to run fast user tests.

  • Accuracy vs. Insights in Quantitative Usability

    Better to accept a wider margin of error in usability metrics than to spend the entire budget learning too few things with extreme precision.

  • Try to Be a Test User Sometime

    In pilot studies, you can occasionally relax the need for real users and let members of your own team serve as test participants. It's good for them.

  • Parallel & Iterative Design + Competitive Testing = High Usability

    3 methods for increasing UX quality by exploring and testing diverse design ideas work even better when you use them together.

  • Paper Prototyping: How to Create & Usability-Test Simple UI Prototypes (Tutorial)

    Create low-fidelity, low-commitment rapid user interface prototypes to can get early user feedback. Video shows how to conduct user testing of these simulated screens, with examples of the kinds of usability problems you can discover by testing different kinds of prototypes.

  • 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.