Benefits and Goals
Excellent User Testing uncovers gaps in user expectations versus reality. It reveals how users perceive specifics within your software, app, or prototype. It sheds a spotlight on gaps in how users actually use your product (or prototype) versus how they’re supposed to. These gaps are what defines friction for users, which in turn results in frustration and low user retention. These gaps in user expectations versus software reality are what define user (un)happiness.
Who to User Test
Your current users are a great resource to user-test new ideas, and new features with, especially if this is done at an early stage clickable prototype stage. However, current users are not recommended for testing your existing live product, because of their level of familiarity. To reveal gaps and opportunities with your software’s existing implementation, it’s best done with individuals who fit your key user personas, but who haven’t seen your product before. For B2B or Enterprise SaaS applications the key user persona is typically a combination of job title and level of technical expertise. For Consumer applications, this is more lifestyle-related demographic information. Data to identify the key user personas can come out of User Discovery Interviews.
How User Testing is Done Remotely
I have written more extensively about how to conduct remote User Testing. My view is that it’s more effectively conducted by a UX professional or even any team member within your organization, rather than outsourced to third party user testing platforms such as usertesting.com because the gold nuggets are revealed in probing questions and digging in deeper, rather than watching videos of users walking themselves through tasks in a linear fashion (which is the output of user testing platforms). User testing is not a linear exercise, it's a free-flowing conversation based on guidelines and scripts that test existing hypotheses, with many tangents that lead to insights. It’s like therapy, you never know where you’ll end up, and sometimes won’t remember how you got there.
Deliverables and Outcomes of User Testing
The deliverables include a document outlining takeaways and findings from each round of user tests, which typically consist of 5-7 user tests. A full transcript of the user tests is included as well since various stakeholders within your organization might catch different issues based on their perspectives and expertise. A UX Watch Party might be part of the output as well, consisting of various recordings of users' struggles as well as key quotes capturing the key takeaways.
If you want to find out if Remote User Testing is appropriate for your organization’s needs, feel free to reach out to us! Subscribe to our newsletter to keep up with our series on UX Research Roadmaps.