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Usability Testing: General Guide to Creating Tasks for Test Users
This article is a followup to my article “A general guide to moderated usability testing questions & prompts”, now read by more than 3,000 people who wanted to learn more about how to conduct moderated usability tests.
I’d like to share some general best practices for creating non-leading tasks that will create more informative insights that give clearer signals on where to go next. These notes contain examples and things to keep in mind when you are trying to understand your customers and their pain points, how users respond to your content, or how they interact with a newly designed flow. As always, usability tests are not the one and only way to learn from users. Be sure to cross reference customer surveys and reviews, and metrics around conversion and user engagement to get a full picture.
Get clarity on what you are trying to learn from the test:
As you get started, are there specific questions you have in mind? Consider asking other members of the product team, like visual designers, data analysts and copy writers etc. if they have questions to add to your test.
For example, if you are testing a home page, are you trying to see how most users will access a new flow given multiple entry point options? Are you…
