Remote user testing is here to stay — and we can help you get started

At 8-bit-sheep, one of the things we’ve realised early on regarding product development is how crucial it is to use a multitude of methods to bring the voice of the customer to any development project. Yes, we love big data and statistical analysis, but to really get into the heads of your customers and to understand what they think, you also need to talk with them.

Over the years, we’ve become fans of both focus groups as well as one-to-one user tests. What’s so great about these forms of interaction is how much you learn by also studying the facial expressions and body language of the participants when they interact with your product. Now, one might think that current lockdowns, remote working and stay-at-home culture would make these kinds of focus groups and one-to-one interviews close to impossible. However, over the past month, we’ve learned that it’s much easier to conduct meaningful online user interviews and product walkthroughs than we originally thought.

As an example, the latest case we did was a series of six 45-minute interviews with prospect users of a mobile app. During the sessions, the users had to open a Sketch prototype in their browser, share their screen and then walk through the prototype with the interviewer. Even though the group we interviewed was very heterogeneous regarding their home office setup, IT skills and age, everyone was able to go through the interviews just as planned. Best of all, they didn’t need to install any special software — it was all in the browser.

The setup we used is based on the premium version of Google Hangouts (which is a bargain, to be honest), with few extra features you need to actively turn on in your admin console: streaming and recording. In order to make the interview feel more comfortable for the users, we streamed the test sessions so that the product team could follow the interview live without having to be in the same Meet session as the interviewer (which might turn out to feel a bit too creepy).

The product team had their own backchannel Hangout, they watched the interview stream live, and also used Google’s Jamboard to make notes during the interviews. Jamboard was also used afterwards to wrap up the interviews and collectively work on the notes. Additionally, the interviews were recorded, so that the team could go back to the files and look for a comment they needed to re-check (I need to stress that both streaming and recording were naturally done with the interviewee consent).

That’s all there is to it — and it works great! To sum up, here are a few key points why this is as good a time as any to keep on talking with your users:

1. Many of the people who hadn’t been familiar with online conferencing before have also gained the basic skills needed to do video calls by now.
2. There are many cheap or even free tools available to facilitate teamwork before, during and after the interview sessions.
3. People have time to participate. And actually, a user test like this might be the much-welcomed deviation to the daily lockdown routine!

Have you been using these techniques to keep chatting with your user base?

If you want to know more about the cases, and how we work with customers to help product development, please get in touch with us!