UX Research for testing
This post is part of a series on the phases of UX research. If you haven’t already, we recommend reading them all:
- UX Research: Phases of the research process
- UX Research for discovery
- UX Research for exploring
- UX Research for testing
- UX Research for listening
After the discovery and exploration phases that we have covered in previous posts, we are now going to delve into the third phase: the testing phase.
Testing/evaluation phase
This time we will use methods that allow us to validate designs during their development and the rest of the product life cycle, to check and ensure that the systems work correctly for the users.
As we did in the previous article, we will describe the different UX Research techniques that can best serve for testing.
Evaluative research techniques
Accessibility evaluations
Accessibility evaluations aim to ensure that digital products can be used by all people, including those with functional diversity.
These evaluations seek to satisfy the needs, preferences, and situations of all users, especially if the goal is to reach the widest possible audience, in addition to complying with government laws.
This type of evaluation should be implemented to identify which points are improvable in terms of accessibility.
Tools: WGAC-EM, Tawdis, ARIA, or W3C validators.
Benchmark
A benchmark is a standard or reference point that allows a company to compare itself with its competitors through different metrics. This technique allows us to compare the strategy or activity of the main competitors or market-leading companies in the chosen sector.
A benchmark is performed when comparing the evolution of a product in a certain time variable.
There are three types of benchmark implementation:
- Retrospective: Participants are asked to recall their most recent experience with an interface and answer questions. This way, there is no need to access any tool or experience itself, but only to perform tests with existing users who need to remember past actions (which may be fallible or biased).
- Task-based: Participants are asked to try specific tasks, simulating real use in a controlled environment. With this approach, more detailed task interactions are obtained, and tests can be performed with both new and existing users, but access to the product is needed, as well as defining tasks and success criteria concretely and prior to the test.
- Mixed option: Fortunately, benchmark studies can use a combination of retrospective and task-based studies. For this, we start by asking current users to reflect on their experiences and then ask a combination of new and existing users to attempt to complete tasks.
Tools: Research device and document software.
Quality Assurance (QA)
Quality Assurance (QA) is a quality control technique whose main objective is to review the correct implementation of both proposed solutions in prototypes and visual design in the development phase, compared to the system in production or launched.
The main advantage of QA is to detect deviations from the implemented reality regarding proposed solutions as early as possible. Thanks to this technique, we can know how all the conclusions obtained from previous phases have been implemented, thus avoiding problems prior to the product release.
Tools: Software for creating documentation.
In our projects, we use combinations of all the techniques described in this testing phase, thus achieving more complete and reliable final results.
Once this testing phase is completed, we can start to make our digital product public and begin listening to our users, which will be the next and final phase of UX research.
If you want to train in UX research with specialized training, we invite you to check out our Advanced Research Specialization Program (this training is in Spanish):
This is a translation of the following article from our corporate website:
https://www.torresburriel.com/weblog/2021/02/15/ux-research-para-testear/
