What is User Testing?

User Testing is one of the forms of software testing that recently has become important for todays business’ product success. This is a unique method of software testing that involves a process that is used in the design process and particularly user testing is done by a group of humans who evaluate a software application or product or prototype.

What is the Significance of User Testing for Businesses?

User testing is a process that is used to test the interface and functions of a website, application, mobile app< or service. Specifically, this user testing review is taken up by real users who perform uat testing process in realistic conditions. These users give real-time feedback and experiences with user testing of websites, apps, and prototypes. This sort of crucial feedback can be used to make recommendations and improvements to the product.

Therefore, this user testing process helps to gain valuable insights from various users on the amount of time it takes to complete various tasks and helps to know about rapid customer feedback. Moreover, by performing usability testing, it gives first-hand information for businesses about the website, app, or product whether it is ready to be launched for real-users.

How to do User Testing?

1. Define test objectives in detail:

A clear outline that covers user testing goals should be the first step to start with. Testing objectives should be properly defined by the testing team and consistency should also be maintained.

2. Select a suitable testing method

Most adequate testing method should be worked upon and decided. Some of the best testing methods are remote user testing, card-sorting, A/B testing, individual in-depth interviews, focus groups, etc.

3. Select the required users

Select at least 3 to 5 users who will contribute to identifying key issues. A user persona based on the organization’s requirement should be created. Factors pertaining to the user persona are age, gender, location, education, profession, income, technical proficiency, etc.

4. Find a suitable location

It would be much better to test in person. The reason being their behaviour can easily be studied and a productive conversation can take place. If the user is able to visit the client’s office (who wants to conduct testing), then It will be really good for drawing meaningful conclusions about a product. On the contrary, if the user cannot visit in person, then virtual meetings can be taken up.

5. Moderate the test

The quality of testing is measured by checking how well the tests run. A tester can select certain focus groups who might be able to provide valuable feedback about a product and a proper moderator for the user testing should be made available.

6. Document the test result

All the user test findings should be well-documented in the form of a report. This report will provide key insights as to what worked and what didn’t from a testing perspective.

Advantages for Businesses with User Testing are:

– Gives an effective understanding of customer experience

– Derives insights and gives real-time feedback on user experiences about the product

– Helps to give first-hand information about the product as real users test the product

– Facilitates as a perfect stage validation for design issues if any

– States or identifies if any improvements are required for the product

When Should User testing be Taken up?

Typically, User testing should be taken up at every point and rather should be an integral part of the iterative design process. This type of testing should essentially be taken up in the initial design phase, sometimes even by using good and effective designs with paper prototypes.

During the digital prototyping phase, they should evolve clickable prototypes. And even at the end phase of final phase, user experience testing should be taken up, as it helps to refine what has been built in case of any changes required.

There are various types of user testing that form an integral part of this type of testing that has been detailed below.

What are the Different Types of User Testing?

Usability Testing:

This is a specific type of user testing that is done by real users to see how easy it is to use a website product or application. The major goal of usability testing is to know how humans interact with the product and the primary importance is to improve the product design. This form of testing aims at how real users are able to accomplish typical goals, tasks with a product when testing is done under controlled conditions.

Some of the benefits of usability testing are it helps to save time and costs as if it is taken up early helps to know where there are bugs or flaws while using the product. Early detection of bugs ensures faster methods to improve the product and it typically saves both time and cost.

Moreover, in today’s competitive world, creating average products will not assure business success. Hence, only those products with outstanding user experience (UX) will vow the customer and are bound to delight customers and deliver a great customer experience (CX).

Tree Testing:

This form of user testing is the simplest form of testing wherein users are given a tree-like sitemap of an application or a website. They are instructed to navigate without the distraction of visual elements and check how they would move in order to find something. Some of the common tools that can be used for testing are UserZoom, Treejack, etc.

Remote Usability Testing:

This is an important method of remote user testing wherein an insight platform is used to record the screen and voice of the participants as they interact and test the product in their natural environment.

This user testing process helps to gather feedback from real people for products and essentially their true experiences give proper insights about the product.

This product feedback and outcomes are unbiased as the testing is performed by users in remote areas from various geographical locations. There are two methods of remote usability testing named as moderated and unmoderated usability testing methods.

Open Card Sorting:

In this method of testing, testers are asked to sort navigation items into different categories which are created by testers. Specifically, users are asked to organize cards into groups based on how they feel appropriate and then name each group and label that group.

This testing method is more commonly used for existing information architectures or organizing products on a site. The user testing software tools that can be used to do this sort of testing are Optimalsort and Whimsicalsort.

Closed Card Sorting:

This method of testing can be categorized as a summative variation of open card sorting. Here the categories are already named and the tester only names where the navigation item belongs. The same tools of open card sorting can also be used here.

Remote Card Sorting:

This is conducted on a remote card sorting session and user works independently via their own computers to simply sort the cards. There are many user testing tools available to perform this sort of testing and some of these tools are Optimalsort, and Simple card sort are a few among them.

Focus Groups:

Specifically, 3 to 6 focus groups with each group consisting of 8 to 10 participants are aimed to identify themes within a dataset. This sort of focus group testing is taken up during the strategy phase of the project.

Qualitative Attitudinal User Testing:

In this method, only a small group of participants try to understand how they feel about a particular product. They keenly analyse the architecture, design of the product when users interact with it. The results are used to analyze the product’s effectiveness and based on inputs required changes are made.

Quantitative Behavioral User Testing:

In this method, at least 20 participants are required and often might require even more participants. The user experience researchers look for the patterns from the collected data and always prefer more users to have as it gives more accurate data when a good number of participants understand the product.

What are the Basic Elements and Process of User Testing?

Create a Prototype:

A prototype is an effectively an early model of a product that usually has limited functionality. It is essential that this early design concept should be learned more and it is done by creating a prototype.

Develop/Create a test plan:

It is important to have a test plan in place with what is to be tested (features, functionalities, tasks, etc.) and how the process will measure the product. The success or fail rate of test in specific product areas is to be taken up which will be notified in this test plan.

Recruit participants for User testing:

It is highly important to recruit participants and the sales teams of stakeholders can be contacted to get some customer contacts. It is preferable to have at least 3-5 testers and it is equally important to schedule the tests with good breaks between tests to get the best results.

Choose a suitable test location:

It is always preferable to have testing in person as body language clearly can be read. Even a remote meeting either with skype or hangout can also be planned. But, it is preferable to have a compatible meeting place with the least distraction to ensure the best results.

Run/perform the test:

The most critical aspect of user testing is this phase wherein the quality of testing is heavily dependent on how well you run the test and communicate by moderating effectively. The real users should be given enough time and should be told to experience the app or product as real-time users and take their inputs and feedback.

Record/Document test results:

It is important to summarize the findings in an effective way to within spreadsheets, audio and video recordings of results, or even a screen recording, as the case may be. Even a recording with a webcam can also be taken up. A proper understanding of the results through the documented formats should be used to get analyse the entire feedback of the user testing.

Conclusion

Today’s businesses achieve success only if their product, app, or website is effective and delivers great customer experience (CX), which is effectively achieved through a proper QA testing process. User testing is one important testing method that is performed by a group of real users to get an overview or understanding about the product.

This sort of user testing helps to improve the product design, as real users test ideas in real scenarios to understand better. Importantly, the insights gained from observing how actual users use your product are very crucial for product success. Leverage user testing services by testing services provider to get a complete understanding of your product, website or mobile application to be ensured of getting an effective product that delivers great UX.

The post User Testing Guide – What, Types and How to Perform Testing first appeared on TestingXperts.

In the dynamic web and mobile application development world, providing a seamless UX is of the utmost importance. This is why user testing is always integral to the design and development process. It helps address usability problems and provides users with what they expect. Although the current user testing tools have the necessary functionalities to run tests, such as platform testing and test planning designing, there are some improvement areas that need to be addressed to streamline the whole process. This includes: 

• Analyzing user feedback and behavioral data manually is a hectic process. 

• Small businesses or startups might not have access to costly testing tools. 

• Hiring moderators and users is time-consuming. 

• High chances of errors and a lot of time consumption when manually setting up and configuring tests. 

• Failing to capture eye movements, subtle user emotions during manual analysis, and more.

Now the question is, “What can artificial intelligence (AI) do in all of this?” 

Importance of AI-powered User Testing 

Compared to traditional user testing methods, AI-powered user testing helps businesses detect usability issues much faster, allowing them to deeply understand user behavior and ensuring that their final product meets a usability benchmark before complete rollout. Its key benefits include: 

• Fastly identifying usability issues that users might face when using the website or mobile app. 

• Assist in uncovering gaps or missing functionalities that go unnoticed during manual testing. 

• Analyzing and implementing direct feedback from users to improve design and functionalities. 

• Helps in enhancing overall UX to meet user expectations. 

• Businesses can further enhance their products to boost conversion and user retention rates.

How Does AI Transform User Testing? 

User testing is critical to the software development lifecycle (SDLC). However, traditional QA methods like user surveys and manual testing cannot satisfy modern business and user requirements. They are also not scalable and are highly time-consuming. AI helps address these challenges by automating and upscaling the testing process. AI leverages data analytics and ML algorithms to streamline the user testing process. Here is how AI helps in optimizing the user testing process:  

Predictive Analytics:

AI algorithms use historical data to build models identifying workflow areas impacting system performance. Enchanted predictive analytics facilitates the prediction of potential usability issues before they occur. This allows developers and designers to proactively address weak areas before they become serious, causing crashes or app shutdown issues. 

Optimizing Development Time:

AI-powered test automation speeds up the user feedback cycle. Quicker results deliver a complete understanding of user behavior and preferences. This helps companies identify any miscalculations in their products and equip them to meet better changing user needs. 

Better Resource Optimization:

People, Money, and Time are the three critical resource allocation factors. Intelligent automation engineers gather and analyze data 24/7. AI mitigates manual analysis, allowing businesses to concentrate their resources on more strategic tasks. They can optimize software features, remediate critical UX issues, and focus on innovation. 

Improving Bug Detection Capabilities:

When bugs and faults occur post-deployment, mitigating them becomes costly and difficult. AI algorithms can create and analyze auto-generated scripts to identify possible bugs. These bug-hunting algorithms assist businesses in identifying problem sources by learning from data and spotting correlations. By doing so, they can address and fix those bugs pre-deployment. 

Expanding Geographical Reach:

In-person testing has limited capabilities, making it harder for companies to collect diverse feedback. On the other hand, remote user testing enables companies to expand their geographical reach while welcoming diverse and representative feedback. In all of this, AI assists in translating languages to remove communication barriers. Businesses will have data from users from different regions and cultures. Also, remote user testing is convenient and cost-effective, significantly reducing the effort and time needed for user recruitment. 

Business Benefits of Leveraging AI in User testing 

Leveraging AI in user testing helps improve the overall user experience. The process involves using AI technologies to evaluate and optimize the software usability. It speeds up the testing process and offers comprehensive insights into user interactions, which is impossible with manual testers alone. Let’s take a look at some of the business benefits of integrating AI in the user testing process: 

• It will reduce testing time by automating repetitive tasks by running multiple tests simultaneously, leading to faster software development cycles and quicker time-to-market. 

• AI algorithms can analyze vast datasets to identify issues that might go unnoticed by manual testers. This would improve the test results’ accuracy, leading to better product quality. 

• By automating testing processes, businesses can lower operating costs and overall testing workload. 

• AI enables continuous testing and improvement throughout the development cycle, leading to higher software refinement and user satisfaction. 

• AI-powered user testing is scalable, allowing businesses to handle large-scale applications and increase their testing scope. 

• By analyzing user behavior patterns and preferences, AI offers deep insights into UX. This helps in optimizing software for a more seamless and engaging UX. 

How Can Tx Assist with AI-Powered User Testing? 

The key aim of user testing is to ensure the web or mobile apps meet the user’s expectations. Identifying bugs in the earlier stage will be easier to fix and involve less cost. At Tx, we offer user testing services that evaluate UX, interface design, and usability. We leverage the latest tools and technologies, like AI, ML, and automation, to ensure our comprehensive approach meets your user’s expectations, leads to higher engagement and conversions, and delivers greater business outcomes. Partnering with us will give you the following benefits: 

• Ensure the product’s user-friendliness and deliver a higher level of user satisfaction. 

• Proactively addressing usability issues to improve CX and retention rates. 

• Leveraging in-house AI-powered accelerators like Tx-Automate and Tx-SmarTest to improve test processes. 

• Reducing development costs by leveraging our test automation capabilities to identify issues at an earlier stage. 

• Improving and building your brand reputation by delivering seamless UX. 

Conclusion 

Today’s businesses can achieve success only when their software, web, or mobile app products deliver a great CX with performance-rich features. And this can be achieved by implementing a proper QA testing process. AI-powered user testing is a crucial method in the current digital business age, which includes using top-end AI-powered tools and technologies to streamline the QA process. Tx, the leader in the digital engineering and QA field, assists in optimizing the UX of your product, website, or mobile application by leveraging digital tools and technologies. To learn more, Tx can help. Contact our experts now. 

The post How is AI Transforming the User Testing Landscape?  first appeared on TestingXperts.