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Oftentimes a startup does not have the luxury of having an in-house design team to run these sessions. I’ve heard of startups outsourcing this; however, this can be violating one of the cardinal rules for a startup – “cheap”. Here are some steps you can take so that you can perform a user test and get relevant and quick feedback.

Before testing

1. Set some goals and objectives. Determine the goals of the user test by looking at the set of features you want feedback around. Create prompts or tasks around those.
2. A script. This will help you to be prepared and make sure everyone is hearing the same thing and it will have instructions for the user to complete certain tasks. Here it is important to think about your objective of the test and how you word it to the participant. Sometimes it’s not good to be so obvious. Example: You want to see if the navigation is noticeable and intuitive. The task should not be: “Look at the navigation and tell me if it is intuitive.”, rather, “You want to buy some shorts for your nephew, how would you do that through this site?”
3. Participant selection. Select about 5-7 participants who most closely fit your target demographic. Worried about the small size? Usability experts have stated that this number will catch about 80% of the problems.

During testing

1. Be objective.This is as difficult as you have spent so much time on your product.You are testing the interface not the user, so there is no wrong answer. This means you should try not to lead the user or offer help to complete tasks. Oftentimes it is tempting to answer their questions, but a good response is to ask them, “What do you think it should it do?”.
2. Think aloud. You want to hear their thoughts and their impressions. This is a bit of an unnatural thing to do in front of the computer, so you may have to gently remind them. One question I like to continually ask is: “What are you thinking right now?” This is a good question to ask if you see them taking a long time to do something or looks like they are searching for something.
3. Actions speak louder than words. Have them “show” you how they “normally” do things – (We’ve found that what they say is not always how they do things)
4. Document. Take as many notes as possible and look for patterns
5. Bonus Tip: After each session, I like writing 3-4 key learnings/findings from each session, so at the end of the day the design team can look for patterns easily.

After testing

1. Analyze. When looking at all the data, I like to make sure to keep it to focusing on patterns. If you are keeping a whiteboard list, this can be helpful in cutting right to the patterns.
2. Debrief, debrief, debrief. It’s very good to talk with the rest of the team about what you have learned to corroborate findings and make sure you haven’t caught anything.
3. Action Items. Create 3-5 recommendations that are actionable.
4. Communicate. Talk to all the stakeholders involved so that you can make sure these changes get into the product.

Now you are well on your way to becoming a usability expert!!

This is part of the User Testing for Startup Series. You can find Part 1 here: Ways to do user testing on the cheap.

Last week I went to a Girls In Tech event hosted by Circle of Moms. One of the interesting things was that they were a all male team, and most were single. A great discussion started about how could an all male team build a site for moms? Should you be a part of the demographic that you are building the product for? Sometimes, I would argue that it’s sometimes better if you are NOT a part of the demographic.

Here are the reasons why:

YOU are not every user.
In user experience design, I see people make this mistake all the time. Religious wars break out over what makes sense to different people – drop downs or radio buttons. This just shows me that not every user is the same, and perhaps YOU as the creator is not every user.

It’s TOO Personal
I’ve often met people who have made great decisions in their professional career, but horrible decisions in their personal career. There is a certain level of emotion and attachment that happens in our personal lives that at times does not allow us to see clearly. I don’t think that’s wrong when it comes to personal matters, but when building a startup product for people, it’s a good idea to relinquish as much personal attachment to how you’ve executed as much as possible. This will enable you to approach decisions in a more logical manner and get up easier when you are knocked down.

I know what I’m doing!
The key to building a successful product is to be “open”. Building for a different demographic can be helpful for that. Oftentimes if you claim you are the target demographic, you may feel a need to make sure all the product decisions made are ones you would use (see #1) or else, god forbid you may not be a “part” of that demographic. However, once you know you are not in the target demographic, your decisions are not as much based on who you are, but rather how well you can listen and interpret what is going on. You become more of an ethnographer.

Being on the outside can be one of the most insightful perspectives of all!

Being a startup, cheap and fast are always two things that are at the forefront of our minds. When it came time for our product to get some user testing there were several ideas that came to mind:

1. Craigslist

You can post an ad on Craigslist offering people a $50 Amazon Gift Card for about 1-2 hours of their time. You can have them come in or do it over the phone. In person is nice to see their facial expressions but can lead to an artificial environment. Doing it over the phone creates a remote user testing situation (see below).

2. Family and Friends Night

This is a fun way to get the entire company involved. You order pizza/beer and invite a bunch of family and friends. Get your friends to do several tasks and have developers or anyone else in the company on hand to moderate and take notes of folks. While this is very light it can offer some feedback and get other stakeholders very involved. Oftentimes after these sessions non-designers become champions for good design as they have seen how their participants have struggled.

3. Starbucks Stranger Testing

If you have moxie and are in the Silicon Valley, it’s not too strange to go up to a stranger in Starbucks to get their quick feedback in exchange for a coffee drink. This is not scientific but it will get you some unbiased perspectives while also watching them use your product in a non-lab environment.

4. Remote User Testing

This is very good if you have a mature product with some traffic. Even if you have mocks it will work “okay”. The great thing about this is you can see what type of environment the user is using your product or will be using your product. You will get to see how often they get interrupted and how their desktop is set up. I was amazed to hear how often participants with babies would be interrupted, how cluttered people’s desktop was, and their general workflow to take down notes, copy links, navigation, etc…

It’s been a long time coming, but it’s finally here!

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Woohoo, it’s been awhile, but we were nominated for The Crunchies!

Hope we make it to the finals! Vote for us!

I have to admit I play Lotto Scratchers every once in awhile… I know the odds are against me. I guess I like the slow anticipation of possibly winning money as I work hard at scratching away at the surface…

Today I bought “The Big Cheese” where you have 5 chances to match up the number under the “Big Cheese”. As I scratched away holding my breath at each scratch, I pulled up a loser on all 5 chances. One one of them I thought , if this digit was a “6″ I could have won $500. Then I realized that the Lotto had not stripped me from my dignity by leaving me with a glimmer of hope that I “could have been a winner”.

The amusing thing is I fall for it every time. Lotto knows that that number is not the winning number, yet they choose to print the amount I’d win on it. They could save some ink, but I’m sure their returns on people buying another ticket because they felt “close” to winning some money is more than worth the extra ink.

Well back to designing experiences that leave people with hopes and dreams of how they *could be* a winner….