How To Do Simple Usability Testing

Learn to create better interfaces with an easy guide of how to conduct usability testing from start to finish.

I’m a product designer on the artificial intelligence team of the largest telecommunication company within Switzerland. While creating AI and data-based interfaces, there’s one thing I consider as the most important part of my job: designing easily understandable solutions. And to verify whether or not something is easy to understand for a user can be pretty simple.

Even though most designers already know the importance of usability testing, there are still so many websites that aren’t user-friendly at all. But why? Maybe because there are a lot of untrue prejudices about usability testing:

Complex, expensive, time-consuming…

But no matter for what reason you skipped the usability testing so far, here’s an easy guide how to do a simple testing by yourself. If you want people to use or even love your website, you have to do these tests as often as possible. Because if your users don’t know how to use your website or application, they won’t use it anymore — makes sense, doesn’t it? And it doesn’t matter if you’re the designer, the product manager, the developer or even the data scientist of your team: Everyone can do simple usability testing!

Introduction

If you’re building an interface, there are going to be people using it. So if you want to do a good job, you should better test if these people understand what they see and use. To build the best possible product, start testing even before you’ve developed something. You can test sketches but also wireframes or prototypes. Repeat these tests at least in each product development phase.
No matter at which phase you’re testing, you’ll simply give your interface (or whatever it is you want to test) to a user, let him do some predefined tasks, observe him and find the problems. Not to mention, you’ll try to fix the issues and test again.

Step One: Prepare Your Testing

If you want to get useful results out of your testing, you need to prepare yourself. This won’t take a lot of time if you’re already familiar with the product you’re going to test and you’ll get faster the more often you do usability testing.

1: Understand what you’re going to test 💡
At the beginning make sure you understand the prototype or interface you’re going to present to the user.
e.g. «What is this website about?»

2: Set goals for the testing 🚀
Define what you want to find out with the usability testing. If you have a complex application, try to focus on one particular part for the testing sessions.
e.g. «Can someone register on our website without any instructions?» or «Do people get what we’re selling?»

3: Write down tasks for the user ✅
Now that you know what your goal is, you can define tasks for the test users. The tasks obviously depend on what you’re going to give the person to test. With sketches you may ask broader questions like «Describe what you can see here» and with an interactive prototype you can ask the testing person to do tasks like e.g. «Create a new account and use your Facebook login» or «Change your password».

4: Choose who to test with 👥
Find out who’s your target group. You need to know who’s going to use your interface to choose the people for your testing. You can choose the people to do the usability testing spontaneously (e.g. in the office or on the street) or if you have a very specific target group (e.g. pregnant women), you can use services like testingtime.com or simply try to find these people with social media. Don’t worry if you don’t have the extra time or money to search for specific people. It’s better to test with anybody than to just skip the testing because you couldn’t find a «matching» person.
You should do your usability testing with at least three people, I would recommend you to do it with five.

5: Choose where to test and who should attend 🏢
The best place to do usability testing is a quiet place like a meeting room. Use screen-sharing software to share the testing live with members of the product team. In addition, you can also record the testing to show the most important parts later on. You may ask yourself, why should I make other people attend the testing? There are two good reasons for this. First, it might be a bit stressful as a usability testing beginner to ask questions, to observe and to write things down all at once. So if other people are joining your testing, someone can take over the part of writing the observations down. Second, you and your team members will all have the same level of knowledge. So you no longer need to argue whether something is understandable or not. You all will know where the biggest problems are and what you need to fix first. These testing sessions can also help you to show clearly why a particular feature is really needed or why this particular design element is so important.

6: Practice 🔄
This step is important if you’re a beginner. I highly recommend you to do a pre-test with the colleague sitting next to you. With a pre-test, you’re going to find out if the defined tasks are understandable and possible to solve. Afterwards, you’ll also have a first idea of how much time the testing’s going to take.

Step Two: Do the Testing

You’re now prepared to do a usability testing. In general, this simple usability testing has four parts: introduction, tasks, questions, and conclusion. Don’t forget to bring your notes with the tasks and paper and a pen with you.

1: Introduction 🤝
Start your testing with a short introduction. Explain who you are and what you’ll do in the next few minutes with the test user. If you did a pre-test, you can provide an estimate of the time the testing’s going to take. Inform the user if other people are attending the testing or if you’re going to record it. If necessary, let the test user sign a paper that allows you to show the recordings to your team members. Please tell him that you’re going to test the product and not the user! This is very important. The test user can’t do any mistakes. Also, remind him to think out loud. During the testing, you shouldn’t answer the user’s question. You’ll provide him the responses at the end of the usability testing.
To break the ice and to get more familiar with the test person, you can ask some easy background questions to start the usability testing, e.g. «What do you do for a living?».
Afterwards, provide a short intro about your product/website/prototype. Give just as much information as the test user needs to complete the tasks you’re going to give him.

2: Tasks ✅
This is the most important part of the usability testing. Ask the user to do the predefined tasks and observe him. Remind him to think out loud. Ask him questions like «What are you doing right now?» or «What are you looking at?». Try to be patient and let the user work by himself. Stay objective and don’t influence the person by helping him with the task.

3: Questions 🤔
After the tasks, you can ask all your questions e.g. «Why did you do this like you did it?». Don’t forget to respond to the user’s questions. Maybe your attending team members have questions too, let them ask them.

4: Conclusion 🎁
It’s very important to appreciate the time the test user took to help you. Provide a small gift to show your gratitude.

Step Three: Evaluate Your Testing

Sorry, you’re not done yet. Actually, it just started. After the three to five testing sessions, you perhaps know a lot of problems with your website (or the part you’ve focused on) and you need to solve them now.

1: Summarization 📝
Summarize the feedback you’ve got and the problems you’ve realized that your interface has. Try to make a list and prioritize while focusing on the biggest problems that need to be solved first. Important: Don’t wait too long to write your summarization. You’ll forget things.

2: Solve 🔨
Plan, together with your product team, when and how you’re going to do solve the problems you’ve found. Focus on the biggest problems and on the ones that can be solved very easily.

3: Reflect ⬅️
If you’re a usability testing beginner, you’re going to improve after every testing you did. Try to reflect and find things, you can improve the next time. Furthermore, you can ask the test user how he experienced the testing.

Congrats, you’ve just learnt how to create better interfaces! Although it seems to be quite a lot you need to do, it’s not that hard and it’s definitely worth it. And just don’t forget: Practice makes perfect.

I hope this article helped you to understand how and why to do a simple usability testing. If you’re interested in more information, I can highly recommend you the book Don’t make me think of the usability guru Steve Krug or just ask your questions in the comments below.

Happy testing! 🎉