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…
