Testing is an essential part of the overall UX design process and the UX designer's job. It's a great way to get rid of issues or user issues that weren't expected during the design phase.
1. Test as soon as you can. The earlier you test, the easier it is to make changes, and the more the testing affects the product's final quality.
Tips:
You can test design mockups and semi-functional prototypes—even low-fidelity ones—as long as you are able to explain the requirements to test participants. You need not wait for a fully formed product.
Start validating your design once you have determined which user tasks should be tested. Guerrilla usability testing can be embraced. Step outside of your office once you have a prototype, find people who are at least similar to your intended customers, and begin testing!
2. Clearly Define Your Goals for the Test: Outline Your ObjectivesBe sure to only ask questions to which you require answers. You need to ask yourself these questions before you start user testing:
"What should I know from this exam?"
then you can write your questionnaire or survey with that goal in mind once you know what you need to know.
3. Closed questions offer a limited number of possible responses. These may be multiple choice or binary (yes/no). You can learn customers' language and come up with new ideas by asking open-ended questions.
4. Treat Design as a Dynamic Process A lot of designers think of the design process as a linear process that involves user research, prototyping, and testing. However, it ought to be viewed as a fluid procedure.
The UX design process ought to place regular feedback from users at its center.
Testing must be included in the iterative process of product design and development in the same way that coding, design, and gathering requirements do. If resources are available, user tests should be conducted at each stage of this process.
5. Test With Actual Users Validate your design using actual user tests. Test with users who are not just your friends and family! You need users who are unbiased and independent.
Tip: When conducting user experience (UX) testing, it can be helpful, to begin with, the concept of a user in the worst-case scenario. This could be someone who is unaware of your product and is easily distracted during the onboarding process, for example. You can quickly identify areas where the app is not sufficiently simple or clear by watching that person use it.
6. Focus Tasks on Users When assigning tasks to users, it can be tempting to ask them to rate each aspect of your product or what they think of it. However, it is preferable to create tasks for users to attempt in order to obtain immediate, natural feedback during the interaction. For instance, if you test a homepage that has been redesigned:
Bad: How do you feel about our website? How did you assess the web service's usability among the ten?
Better: When you arrive at the homepage, where would you click first?
7. Observe Behavior It is essential to distinguish between observing and listening to users. While both approaches will provide useful information to UX designers, many designers make the mistake of putting too much emphasis on listening. Users can be observed to learn a lot more in a shorter amount of time.
8. Include Everyone in the Process It is crucial to include everyone in the product team in the testing event. The entire team will be able to empathize with the user and comprehend the usability issues better if they can observe the user.
Tips:
You can record the testing session and share it with your coworkers if it is impossible for everyone on the team to attend.
When taking a test, everyone should take notes and write down what they think they learned. At the end of the day, you should take these notes and summarize them.
9. Think Quality, Not Quantity A lot of businesses either don't test their products at all or only test them after they are released because they worry that doing so would be too expensive and take too long. Testing does not necessarily have to be time-consuming or costly. According to NNGroup research: 85 percent of usability issues are typically revealed by testing with five users. As a result, you can gather the group of users together and collaborate one-on-one with them as they experiment with the prototype.
10. Don't try to solve everything at once because it won't work. Fix the biggest, most critical issues first, and then test again. When you solve a problem to the best of your ability, ship the product, collect feedback, observe how it is used, and then iterate accordingly, you have the best testing.
Conclusion
Because even a simple round of testing could make or break your product idea, you can't afford to skip it.
