3 Approaches to Gathering Valuable Insights with Users
4 min read
Experience designers know that usability testing is essential to creating products that truly meet customer needs. This powerful tool allows you to immerse yourself in the real world of your customers, gathering valuable insights that shape the future of your creations.
This article is the result of Circular Design from the month of July, led by our cwiser Carolina Peres, who is a product designer. Circular Design is an internal initiative at CWI that provides a space for monthly discussions and exchanges about project experiences, trending topics and knowledge exchanges.
As our goal is also to share learnings, in this article we bring 3 approaches that Carol presented at the talk that will help you transform these insights into concrete actions, boosting the success of your solutions.
In addition to Carol’s expertise, the content taught was guided by the book “Rocket Surgery Made Easy”, by Steve Krug.
Let’s go!
What is Usability Testing?
With the aim of making it easier for people to use or even assessing whether it is easy to use, usability tests serve to observe people interacting with what you are creating/designing/building or something that has already been created.
From there, you can choose to do the remote test which is divided into two, depending on your objective.
If you search for:
(x) a qualitative approach
(x) deep insights
(x) richer data
Moderated testing is a great option because it is conducted by a trained moderator to gain deeper insights from users. In addition, it allows for direct interaction between the moderator and participants, which allows for a better understanding of the user’s experiences and perspectives.
If you:
(x) seek a less complex test
(x) have a simple flow
(x) does not want to be accompanied by a facilitator
The option is an unmoderated test, a research method in which participants perform tasks and provide feedback without the direct presence of a moderator. In this type of test, customers stay in their own home and also use their own devices to use websites or apps that are being tested.
But our focus in this article is on qualitative testing, as we want more information from our users.
Advantages of Moderated Testing
Carol highlighted the main advantages of moderated testing:
- Sessions longer than an unmoderated test, usually around 1 hour, and provide space to explore a product in more depth;
- Ability to change, skip and reorder tasks as needed;
- Possibilities to ask more specific questions in the interview and gather insights that were not anticipated;
- The participant is less likely to be dividing attention between other tasks;
- The team can watch the test at the same time and discuss the results immediately after the session;
- Greater probability of capturing the user’s difficulties, sometimes he will say that everything was easy, but by following the task you will notice that he has doubts and difficulties.
A golden tip that Carolina gave during the Circular that is worth highlighting:
“When we prioritize what is most relevant to test, it is important to think about where the user will have the most difficulty, instead of taking what we wanted to prove is easier to use. So, take what you think the user will have the most difficulty with,” she highlighted.
Approach 1: Interview
The first approach to generating valuable insights is the construction of the interview itself. According to Carolina, they are much more effective when they start with broad, open-ended questions. “These questions will make the participant comfortable enough to talk about their experience. In addition, they will allow them to share stories that go beyond the information you were not expecting and that later generate new and unexpected data,” she highlighted.
Interviewees do not always give complete answers, but it is possible to create other questions to stimulate conversation. For example:
Can you give me more details about this?
What do you want to tell me with this?
Why do you think that?
To then ask closed questions like:
And did you buy the product through the app or the website?
Before purchasing, what information did you look at?
The more natural the conversation, the more valuable answers you will get in your test!
Approach 2: Structure your tasks
The task structuring part is essential to gather good user insights, because when you apply the test you will already have in mind everything you need to observe. According to Carolina, what will come in addition to the structure script are extras.
A structuring model that can be followed:
What is the objective of the test?
What do you want to observe in the test?
What are the hypotheses?
What insights are you looking for?
Approach 3: Narrowing Down the Final Questions
Towards the end of the test, Carolina suggests narrowing down the questions, as this will allow for important insights into user participation.
Examples:
| What did you think of this experience on this app’s page? | A broad, open-ended question allows anything related to the task to be shared. |
| Was there anything you found difficult? And what was easier? | More specific open-ended questions focused on ease of use. We asked users if they could recall anything that was easy or difficult. |
| What did you think of the filters you were using? | An even more specific open-ended question. With this question we focus the user’s attention on the specific elements of the interface that they used in the task. |
Final Tips
As final tips, Carolina highlighted some very interesting topics that can help you in your next tests!
- Watch your test and analyze where you can improve;
- Have an observer accompany you to speed up the results and help you catch things you didn’t see at the time;
- Have colleagues and friends let you know when you are inducing;
- Don’t be an anxious person, let the user explore the prototype before telling them what works or not;
- Don’t bombard the user with questions all the time, observe and ask questions at the right moments;
- Avoid using task completion screens. This ends up inducing the user to try to “get it right” and meet expectations, when in fact there is no right or wrong in testing. When we do not use these conclusive screens, it is possible to collect unexpected behaviors without the user knowing whether or not they are meeting the expected flow.
We hope you enjoyed the tips and that your tests continue to improve.
