User research methods for testing content
This post is a collaboration between Amy Noss, senior content designer and Małgorzata Sobecka, senior user researcher at Kainos.
The words in your product are just as important as the design.
Testing your words helps to make sure users can find, understand and act on your content.
For example, does your product’s title match the words users would search for online? Have you pitched the tone and language at the right level? And is your content structured in a way that makes sense for your audience?
The best way to answer these sorts of questions is through user research. Here’s 5 great methods for testing content. We’ll take you through what they are, how to use them and why they’re useful.
Card sorting
Card sorting is a research method where participants have fun organising cards into logical categories. It’s flexible! Change this test based on what you want to get from your research.
Card sorting helps you to check your content is easy to understand. It also helps you test navigation, structure and information architecture.
Set up your card sort in person or remotely online.
You can run your session to guide participants. This is called a moderated card sort. Or you can get participants to do it on their own. This is known as an unmoderated session.
Create cards and write the content you need on them. Then choose if you want to do an open, closed or hybrid card sort.
For an open card sort:
- leave the category names blank
- get users to label each category
- get users to sort cards into those categories
For a closed card sort:
- write your own category names
- get users to sort cards into your categories
You can mix it up for the hybrid approach. For example, name a couple of the categories and leave the rest for the participants to name themselves.
Tree testing
This method involves checking your content is findable and well-structured within a website or app’s hierarchical structure.
Give participants a visual of the product’s navigation and get them to find specific things. You could give them an outline of your content in a wireframe or a basic prototype.
Labelling an image
Possibly the most self-explanatory way to test content. In this method participants label or describe different bits of an image.
This helps you find out if your image:
- is easy to perceive and understand
- makes sense to users in context
This is a handy way to test definitions or names of a product or service. Plus, it gives your content designers some great inspiration about what to call a specific thing.
Highlighter testing
This test is a colourful way for participants to spotlight content by highlighting it with a pen or in an online document.
Get participants to use:
- one colour to highlight the most important text
- another colour for text that is unclear or unnecessary
You can get your users highlighting in one or more colours as needed for your research.
This method helps you to:
- capture the user’s focus to pinpoint the most important information that will meet their need
- test out reading comprehension and tone
- shorten longer chunks of text
Cloze test
Give the user a short paragraph of text, usually between 150 to 250 words.
Remove certain words and get the participants to fill in the blanks with their own ones. Now you have the perfect user focused language for your product to help you speak like your users.
The Cloze test will help you to check:
- your users’ language understanding based their previous knowledge of the topic
- how well people can get context and use it to work out missing information
- whether your content makes sense to users
- if your tone of voice is right for them
Further reading
This post has covered some of the content testing methods we love. Comment below if you have any other suggestions.
There are loads of other ways to test content with users. For example, you can read:
