by In an industry devoted to creating a great experience for people who use products, services, and apps, usability testing is paramount. The main goal of usability testing is to inform the design process from the perspective of the end-user.
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Guerilla testing
Guerilla testing is the simplest form of usability testing. Basically, guerrilla testing means going into a public place such as a coffee shop to ask people about your prototype. Test participants are chosen randomly. They are asked to perform a quick usability test, often in exchange for a small gift (such as a free coffee). It’s low cost and relatively simple testing that enables real user feedback.
When to use
Guerilla testing works best in the early stages of the product development process. When you have a tangible design (wireframes or lo-fi prototypes) and what to know whether you’re moving in the right direction or not.
Guerilla testing is also good for collecting personal opinions and emotional impressions about ideas and concepts.
It’s always important to understand that test participant in Guerilla testing might not represent your product’s target audience. That’s why Guerilla testing might not be right for testing niche products that require having special skills (i.e., software for finance brokers).
What to remember
The tasks you select for your testing session play a critical role in whether findings will be useful or not. Since it’s impossible to test everything at once, you need to prioritize all possible scenarios of interactions and select the most probable one (core user flow). It’s also important to remember that you will have a limited time per every test session. Usually, people who participate in guerilla testing will give you maximum 5-10 minutes of their time.
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Lab usability testing
As the name suggests, lab usability testing is testing run in special environments (laboratories) and supervised by a moderator. A moderator is a professional who is looking to obtain feedback from live users. During a moderated test, moderators are facilitating test participants through tasks, answering their questions, and replying to their feedback in real-time.
When to use
Lab usability testing works best when you need to have in-depth information on how real users interact with your product and what issues they face. It will help you investigate the reasoning behind user behavior. The fact that this testing is moderated enables you to collect more qualitative information. At the same time, lab testing can be expensive to organize and run because you need to secure an environment, hire test participants, and a moderator. Another problem with this testing is the number of test participants in a single round. Usually, you have 5-10 participants per research round in a controlled environment. So it’s important to ensure that all test participants are reflective of your actual customer base.
What to remember
Lab usability testing requires having a trained moderator and a place for running a testing. Here are a few things to remember when choosing a moderator:
A moderator should always be ready to help test participants understand the purpose of testing (describe the goal) and keep the participant on track if they have any sort of confusion. However, it does not mean that a moderator should tell test participants what they should do.
Moderator should be good at decoding body language. Remember that what test participants say is not always the same as what they think. That’s why a moderator should be good at observing and analyzing body language and facial expressions.
The after-testing interview is an essential part of this type of testing. Moderators reach test participants after the testing session and ask them a few important questions.
With lab testing, there is always a risk that the controlled environment will be different from the user’s real environment. By placing the user in a controlled atmosphere, there is always a risk of creating a non-realistic user behavior.
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Unmoderated remote usability testing
Unmoderated remote usability testing occurs remotely without a moderator. It offers quick, robust, and inexpensive user testing results to be used for further analysis. Test participants are asked to complete tasks in their own environment using their own devices and without a moderator present, which leads to the product being used naturally. The cost of unmoderated testing is lower; however, this type of testing offers less detailed testing results.
When to use
Unmoderated remote usability testing works the best when you need to obtain a large sample to prove critical findings from your initial moderated research. In other words, you have a particular hypothesis that you want to validate on a large segment of your users. Unmoderated remote usability testing will help you test a particular question or observe user behavior patterns.
What to remember
Remote usability testing doesn’t go deep into a test participant’s reasoning. That’s why it’s not recommended to use unmoderated remote testing as a first usability testing method.
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Contextual inquiry
Contextual inquiry is less a usability testing method and more like an interview/observation method that helps a product team obtain information about the user experience from the real users. Test participants (real users) are first asked a set of questions about their experience with a product and then observed and questioned while they work in their own environments.
When to use
This technique is useful for getting rich information about users their workspace, personal preferences, and habits. Getting all this information at the beginning of the design process will help the product team design a well-tailored experience. But this method also works for shipped products. It’s easy to prioritize the usability issues when you see them from the first-hand experience.
Contextual inquiry is also good when you want to test a user’s satisfaction with a product.
What to remember
Research should never provide their opinion during test sessions. The goal is to watch how test participants interact with a product, not participate in these interactions.
It’s important to take notes during the observation. Having notes after every observation session will help you write a detailed test report.
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Phone interview
A phone interview is a remote usability test where a moderator verbally instructs participants to complete tasks on their device and feedback is collected automatically (the user interaction recorded remotely).
When to use
Phone interviews are an excellent way to collect feedback from test participants scattered around different parts of the globe.
What to remember
This type of testing requires a trained moderator. When it comes to interacting with test participants, a moderator should have excellent communication skills.
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Card sorting
Card sorting is an excellent method for prioritizing content and features in user interface. The technique is relatively simple all you need to do is place concepts (content, features) on cards and allow test participants to manipulate the cards into groups and categories. As soon as test participants sort the cards, a moderator should ask them to explain their logic (to understand the reasoning).
