An Introduction to Lean Usability Testing
When it comes to product creation, it’s important that we start at the most important place: the human at the centre of the problem to be solved.
This paradigm is referred to as ‘Human Centered Design’, or HCD. A simple working definition is:
“Human-centered design is a creative approach to problem solving. It’s a process that starts with the people you’re designing for and ends with new solutions that are tailor-made to suit their needs.”
Talk to your users!
It is critical before jumping into design and prototyping to understand the current state and how our customers are solving their problems today. Customer interviews are one of the most commonly used methods in design research as they are the best way to capture people’s thoughts and emotions. A useful tool that we use at Property Finder is called ‘connect the dots’. The framework looks something like this:
Customer interview questions:
1. When did you last create/interact with a <feature/product/service>?
2. What was the reason for creating this <feature/product/service> at that time?
3. What triggered the <feature/product/service>? What was the driver?
4. Describe what happened. How did you think/feel at each touch point (step)?
5. What were the touch points you had with our services/staff/applications ?
6. Did you use your smartphone or tablet in this process?
7. What were the positive and negative aspects of your experience?
Positive: What made it unique? Negative: What aspects lead to a poor satisfaction level?
8. Did everything go to plan?
9. What happened after that? Did you have further interactions with our staff/services ?
10. How would you like to improve your experience?
Write the journey — connect the dots!
Why do usability testing?
- Understand the strengths and weaknesses of the feature/product
- Determine whether the prototype or release candidate has met the needs of your customers enabling to release the feature for Beta or GA
- Validate and measure the usability and learnability for new and existing users
- Inform feature roadmapping for the future
- Serve as a benchmark for future usability testing
When should I do usability testing?
Testing can be done at all stages of the product/service development process. The earlier you test your hypothesis and assumptions, the sooner you can pivot on your design and save development resources or customer pain.
At all stages you can seek feedback on:
- current product/service
- competitor’s product/service
- similar products/services
- paper prototypes
- wireframes
- alpha releases
- beta releases
- finished products/services
Keep organised, and focussed
The first step of any design research activity including usability testing is to complete a plan. It is one of our sensible defaults at Property Finder. It ensures that any testing has been throughly thought through and makes sense to the business. We think about the problem we are solving, the hypothesis we have and who the target customers are. You can download a copy of our canvas for your own use.
OK, I’m sold. But who do I interview?
Recruitment can be one of the hardest parts of the processes of usability testing. It is crucial to recruit the right participants for your study. This step is often overlooked in the time and effort required. It is also important to recruit your competition’s customers to gain a unique viewpoint into their goals and needs. It is important to maintain a balance in gender, age, geographical region, technology familiarity and other aspects of the target audience you are testing.
Methods for recruitment:
- Existing lists within your team or department
- Contact sales teams
- Community Forums
- An extract from the client database
- Recruitment agencies who specialise in recruitment
- Other colleagues within the company
- Your own network
Easy Peasy! But how many do I need?
You may be surprised to learn that when it comes to user testing you may not need to have 100s of participants. Jakob Nielsen said “If you want a single number, the answer is simple: test 5 users in a usability study. This lets you find almost as many usability problems as you’d find using many more test participants. This answer has been the same since I started promoting “discount usability engineering” in 1989. Doesn’t matter whether you test websites, intranets, PC applications, or mobile apps. With 5 users, you almost always get close to user testing’s maximum benefit-cost ratio.”
OK, I’m set — now what?
Create scenarios, for example:
Here is the profile page, I am going to let you have a look at this page and then I will ask you a few questions.
The questions you’d ask could include:
- What do you expect to see on this page?
- How would you go about creating feature x?
- What did you like about this page?
- What did you dislike about this page?
- Was there anything confusing?
- What would you change?
Ensure you have the participant ‘think aloud’ to talk through their process.
Top tip: Establish early with the participant that they are not being tested in any way and all feedback gathered is good feedback.
For example:
We are looking for your open and honest feedback. There are no right or wrong answers. Remember that we are testing the application, not you, and you can’t do anything wrong here. As you use the app, I’d like you to think out loud as much as you can: tell me what you’re looking at, what you’re trying to do, and what you’re thinking and feeling. I will demonstrate how to do this after this brief introduction.
Dont forget!
- Be patient. The right temperament is key.
- Don’t intervene: Avoid leading the user and helping them when they get lost. Remember to answer any question with a question to avoid leading the user.
- Debrief: Have a debrief and a more informal discussion at the end of the session
What makes this Lean Usability Testing?
You might ask, what makes this lean? The use of an A3 interview guide to take notes on the fly during the testing, allows for very quick analysis of the results. This also means that if you or an observer are focused on the core answers and behaviours observed during testing, there will be a minimal number of times you need to refer to the recording of the testing. This can be done using the following interview guide template which you can modify for your needs. You could have many of these sheets for your test.
Now I have the results… what do I do?
Analysis using lean methods: the first step is to make sure you have each participant’s initials on each square of your A3 interview sheets. Then you cut up all the sheets and gather your team for a lean analysis sessions.
During this session you focus on the issues and recommendations for each sub task. This can be done quickly by looking at how many participants had a particular issue with a part of the design you are testing.
Analyse as a team to gain alignment and consensus — invite a broad range of colleagues to get everyone aware and on board.
Make the sessions fun and interactive!
If you have time, it helps to document the issues in order of severity, measured on a four-point scale.
And that’s it! Proceed from here to continue delivering amazing products.
Suggested reading:
- Rocket Surgery Made Easy — Steve Krug
- Just Enough Research — Erika Hall
- The User Experience Team of One: A Research and Design Survival Guide — Leah Buley
That’s it! Thanks for reading!
If you liked this article and want to be part of our brilliant team that produced it, then have a look at our latest vacancies here.
