Champion In-house User Testing on a tight budget
By: Abeiene Nejar
Tags: UX, UX Research, User Experience, User Testing, Usability

Implementation

I do this in 5 steps and have included templates and links to sources that have inspired me to trim the workload and the documentation given to my clients.

1. Planning

You should always start with a plan whether or not you have been asked. Why? Because it helps you understand what you’re trying to figure out and keeps your client’s engaged and aligned with the test objectives.

“But that’s too much work and no one even reads those documents!”

Working in an agile environment, I definitely know what it’s like to be time-constrained, but there are awesome templates you can use to help streamline your process. Check out Tomar Sharon’s or User Focus’s method.

Regardless of the format you use, your plan should help communicate:

the usability problems you’ve identified, and the hypothesized solution you plan to implement in the prototype

Feel free to take the document I use for planning inspired by User Focus’s template.

2. Recruiting

Recruiting used to take me a long time because I didn’t know where to look for people and who to look for, but after years of practice, these four steps have helped streamline my process;

Define the characteristics of your target users. I use Google Venture’s worksheet to help me recruit. Create your screener questionnaire. Create and post your ad. When I’m on a budget and the company is new (currently has no customers or few), I enlist the help of Craigslist. There are other places to get participants online and offline and really depends on your target participants. Here’s an example of a templated ad. When people start responding, send out confirmation emails to your participants.

3. Create Tasks for User’s to Perform

This is where you ask users to complete a specific task and see if they can complete it. For example, a shopping site’s tasks could include:

find a book

place it in your cart

purchase the book

To help you create a task, think of the goals the user is trying to accomplish using your product/feature. Put yourself in their shoes and think of how you would get from A to B, and start writing them down.

To quantify which tasks suffered most from usability issues, mark 1, 2, or 3 beside each test attempt (inspired by @jhreha’s method):

1 (can’t complete the task)

2 (completed task but struggled)

3 (completed the task)

A template of tasks and questions I use during testing can be found here.

4. Conducting

I love conducting usability tests and learned that preparation is key to organizing and retaining the high volume of information involved.

Prepare an hour before to make sure your prototype and all relevant equipment work. Do a dry run to help get your nerves out and to make sure you’re not missing important tasks. Stay organized with your note taking. You can use excel, or do it by hand. I’m quicker at writing than typing, so this template is for all you note-takers :)

Tip:

I like to do a maximum of 3 participants per day with an hour or two between them. The buffer allows you to prepare for your next participant and gives you time to recap.

5. Sharing the Results

Remember to keep your team engaged by sharing what you’ve learned. Keep it short and sweet by outlining 3 to 5 key observations and outline some recommendations.

Use this template to quickly communicate your results.

Have some counter-arguments or use other methods to improve user testing? Share them by commenting on this article.