Bipolar Emotional Test
By: Sevginur Ak
Tags: User Research, User Testing, Usability Testing Methods, A B Testing, User Experience

What is it?

A bipolar emotional test is a tool for A/B testing. It is conducted after completing the user experience or user interface design phase. The bipolar emotional test is useful for deciding the alternatives when emotions and sensorial points are certain.

How does it be prepared?

The moderator shows design alternatives to participants and wants them to tell which alternative should be selected and why. Then, participants are asked to fill a bipolar form for test subjects.

Let’s talk about it via an example.

As Agency Look, we have tested a mobile application’s homepage with 25 participants for one of our customers in the finance sector. There were 3 alternatives for the homepage. All of the alternatives were all about the placement of advertisement and background. It is important to test alternatives with few variables like all A/B tests.

First, we have determined the emotional and sensational aspects of the homepage design. These aspects are decided by thinking about the emotions of the target group, impressions of the mobile application, and values of the company.

There are 6 criteria that we have focused on:

Liking

Reliability

Simplicity

Ease

Modernity

Intelligibility

Secondly, we have placed these aspects on a chart in positive and negative forms. They can be adjectives or shaped in sentences, it doesn’t matter. Positive statements are written in the left column while negative statements are in the right one. (Or it can be the otherwise as long as all positive statements are in the same column.)

To give an illustration:

In our test, we have placed the degrees in 5 columned charts. The number of columns can be decreased to 3 or increased to 7 according to the complexity of the needed bipolar emotional test. 5 was ideal for our test.

The number of criteria (number of rows) can be increased or decreased too. Here is another example of another test subject:

7 lined bipolar emotional test

How does it be conducted?

Moderator should explain that columns are degrees for criteria. The middle column is for “I’m undecided.” The more approach to the left side of the chart, it means the more positive feelings.

Participants are asked to grade in terms of the adjectives for the selected design alternative among the alternatives.

Then, participants are requested to fill bipolar test forms for other alternatives. If there are 3 alternatives then there must be 3 emotional bipolar test forms for every individual user.

How does it read?

First of all, elimination can be done for bipolar test forms. If a participant’s form is like the form below for all of the alternatives, this participant’s answers can be ignored:

If there is not any distinctive vote, then the form could be ignored.

In our A/B tests, there were 25 participants, but we took into account 22 of them.

After the elimination phase, the number of participants that have selected is written in every cell.

25 people conducted the test but there are 22 participants valid for results.

It can be seen as meaningless, but when we make color mapping, the result is pretty obvious.

The most selected cell is colored with dark green. If the numbers of second and third most selected cells are close to the first one, they can be marked with the shades of green.

Here are the results!

We have an absolute winner! After this test, we moved on with the alternative 3.

Bipolar emotional tests can be used for all kinds of A/B tests in user interface design or user experience design phases. This test type is so convenient when the design or wireframe alternatives slightly similar. If the number of participants is high, then bipolar emotional tests could lead us a result.