5 tips for running an effective usability test

When it comes to financial services, user experience goes way beyond just making things easy to use. It’s about creating a seamless journey and establishing trust at every touchpoint. Think about it: as we rely more and more on digital banking and financial apps in our everyday lives, we need to feel absolutely confident that our personal information is safe and that the companies managing our money actually know what they're doing. Without that trust foundation, even the most competitive brands will struggle with customer adoption.

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Why Trust Matters More Than Ever

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The stakes are uniquely high in financial UX. Unlike other digital products where a poor experience might result in minor frustration, financial applications handle our life savings, investment portfolios, and sensitive personal data. A single misstep in design can trigger alarm bells for users, potentially leading to lost customers.

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Using UX Research to Measure and Build Trust

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Building high trust experiences requires deep insights into user perceptions, behaviors, and pain points. The best UX platforms can help financial companies spot trust issues and test whether their solutions actually work.

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Identify Trust Issues with Tree Testing

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Tree testing helps financial institutions understand how easily users can find critical information and features:

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• Test information architecture to ensure security features and privacy information are easily discoverable
• Identify confusing terminology that may undermine user confidence
• Compare findability metrics for trust-related content across different user segments

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Optimize for Trustworthy First Impressions with First-Click Testing

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First-click testing helps identify where users naturally look for visual symbols and cues that are associated with security:

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• Test where users instinctively look for security indicators like references to security certifications
• Compare the effectiveness of different visual trust symbols (locks, shields, badges)
• Identify the optimal placement for security messaging across key screens

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Map User Journeys with Card Sorting

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Card sorting helps brands understand how users organize concepts. Reducing confusion, helps your financial brand appear more trustworthy, quickly:

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• Use open card sorts to understand how users naturally categorize security and privacy features
• Identify terminology that resonates with users' perceptions around security

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Qualitative Insights Through Targeted Questions

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Gathering qualitative data through strategically placed questions allows financial institutions to collect rich, timely insights about how much their customers trust their brand:

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• Ask open ended questions about trust concerns at key moments in the testing process
• Gather specific feedback on security terminology understanding and recognition
• Capture emotional responses to different trust indicators

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What Makes a Financial Brand Look Trustworthy?

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Visual Consistency and Professional Polish

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When someone opens your financial app or website, they're making snap judgments about whether they can trust you with their money. It happens in milliseconds, and a lot of that decision comes down to how polished and consistent everything looks.Clean, consistent design sends that signal of stability and attention to detail that people expect when money's involved.

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To achieve this, develop and rigorously apply a solid design system across all digital touchpoints including fonts, colors, button styles, and spacing, it all needs to be consistent across every page and interaction. Even small inconsistencies can make people subconsciously lose confidence.

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Making Security Visible

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Unlike walking into a bank where you can see the vault and security cameras, digital security happens behind the scenes. Users can't see all the protection you've built in unless you make a point of showing them.

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Highlighting your security measures in ways that feel reassuring rather than overwhelming gives people that same sense of "my money is safe here" that they'd get from seeing a bank's physical security.

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From a design perspective, apply this thinking to elements like:

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• Real time login notifications
• Transaction verification steps
• Clear encryption indicators
• Transparent data usage explanations
• Session timeout warnings

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You can test the success of these design elements through preference testing, where you can compare different approaches to security visualization to determine which elements most effectively communicate trust without creating anxiety.

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Making Complex Language Simple

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Financial terminology is naturally complex, but your interface content doesn't have to be. Clear, straightforward language builds trust so it’s important to develop a content strategy that:

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• Explains unavoidable complex terms contextually
• Replaces jargon with plain language
• Provides proactive guidance before errors occur
• Uses positive, confident messaging around security features

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You can test your language and navigation elements by using tree testing to evaluate user understanding of different terminology, measuring success rates for finding information using different labeling options.

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Create an Ongoing Trust Measurement Program

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A user research platform enables financial institutions to implement ongoing trust measurement across the product lifecycle:

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Establish Trust Benchmarks

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Use UX research tools to establish baseline metrics for measuring user trust:

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• Findability scores for security features
• User reported confidence ratings
• Success rates for security related tasks
• Terminology comprehension levels

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Validate Design Updates

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Before implementing changes to critical elements, use quick tests to validate designs:

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• Compare current vs. proposed designs with prototype testing
• Measure findability improvements with tree testing
• Evaluate usability through first-click testing

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Monitor Trust Metrics Over Time

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Create a dashboard of trust metrics that can be tracked regularly:

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• Task success rates for security related activities
• Time-to-completion for verification processes
• Confidence ratings at key security touchpoints

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Cross-Functional Collaboration to Improve Trust

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While UX designers can significantly impact brand credibility, remember that trust is earned across the entire customer experience:

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• Product teams ensure feature promises align with actual capabilities
• Security teams translate complex security measures into user-friendly experiences
• Marketing ensures brand promises align with the actual user experience
• ‍Customer service supports customers when trust issues arise

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Trust as a Competitive Advantage

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In an industry where products and services can often seem interchangeable to consumers, trust becomes a powerful differentiator. By placing trust at the center of your design philosophy and using comprehensive user research to measure and improve trust metrics, you're not just improving user experience, you're creating a foundation for lasting customer relationships in an industry where loyalty is increasingly rare.

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The most successful financial institutions of the future won't necessarily be those with the most features or the slickest interfaces, but those that have earned and maintained user trust through thoughtful UX design built on a foundation of deep user research and continuous improvement.

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Usability testing is one of the best ways to measure how easy and intuitive to use something is by testing it with real people. You can read about the basics of usability testing here.

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Earlier this year, a small team within Optimal Workshop completely redesigned the company blog. More than anything, we wanted to create something that was user-friendly for our readers and would give them a reason to return. I was part of that team, and we ran numerous sessions interviewing regular readers as well as people unfamiliar with our blog. We also ran card sorts, tree tests and other studies to find out all we could about how people search for UX content. Unsurprisingly, one of the most valuable activities we did was usability testing – sitting down with representative users and watching them as they worked through a series of tasks we provided. We asked general questions like “Where would you go to find information about card sorting”, and we also observed them as they searched through our website for learning content.

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By stripping away any barriers between ourselves and our users and observing them as they navigated through our website and learning resources, as well as those of other companies, we were able to build a blog with these people’s behaviors and motivations in mind.

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Usability testing is an invaluable research method, and every user researcher should be able to run sessions effectively. Here are 5 tips for doing so, in no particular order.

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1. Clarify your goals with stakeholders

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Never go into a usability test blind. Before you ever sit down with a participant, make sure you know exactly what you want to get out of the session by writing down your research goals. This will help to keep you focused, essentially giving you a guiding light that you can refer back as you go about the various logistical tasks of your research. But you also need to take this a step further. It’s important to make sure that the people who will utilize the results of your research – your stakeholders – have an opportunity to give you their input on the goals as early as possible.

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If you’re running usability tests with the aim of creating marketing personas, for example, meet with your organization’s marketing team and figure out the types of information they need to create these personas. In some cases, it’s also helpful to clarify how you plan to gather this data, which can involve explaining some of the techniques you’re going to use.

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Lastly, find out how your stakeholders plan to use your findings. If there are a lot of objectives, organize your usability test so you ask the most important questions first. That way, if you end up going off track or you run out of time you’ll have already gathered the most important data for your stakeholders.

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2. Be flexible with your questions

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A list of pre-prepared questions will help significantly when it comes time to sit down and run your usability testing sessions. But while a list is essential, sometimes it can also pay to ‘follow your nose’ and steer the conversation in a (potentially) more fruitful direction.

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How many times have you been having a conversation with a friend over a drink or dinner, only for you both to completely lose track of time and find yourselves discussing something completely unrelated? While it’s not good practice to let your usability testing sessions get off track to this extent, you can surface some very interesting insights by paying close attention to a user’s behavior and answers during a testing session and following interesting leads.

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Ideally, and with enough practice, you’ll be able to answer your core (prepared) questions and ask a number of other questions that spring to mind during the session. This is a skill that takes time to master, however.

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3. Write a script for your sessions

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While a usability test script may sound like a fancy name for your research questions, it’s actually a document that’s much more comprehensive. If you prepare it correctly (we’ll explain how below), you’ll have a document that you can use to capture in-depth insights from your participants.

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Here are some of the key things to keep in mind when putting together your script:

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• Write a friendly introduction – It may sound obvious, but taking the time to come up with a friendly, warm introduction will get your sessions off to a much better start. The bonus of writing it down is that you’re far less likely to forget it!
• Ask to record the session – It’s important to record your session (whether through video or audio), as you’ll want to go back later and analyze any details you may have missed. This means asking for explicit permission to record participants. In addition to making them feel more comfortable, it’s just good practice to do so.
• Allocate time for the basics – Don’t dive into the complex questions first, use the first few minutes to gather basic data. This could be things like where they work and their familiarity with your organization and/or product.
• Encourage them to explain their thought process – “I’d like you to explain what you’re doing as you make your way through the task”. This simple request will give you an opportunity to ask follow-up questions that you otherwise may not have thought to ask.
• Let participants know that they’re not being tested – Whenever a participant steps into the room for a test, they’re naturally going to feel like they’re being tested. Explain that you’re testing the product, not them. It’s also helpful to let them know that there are no right or wrong answers. This is an important step if you want to keep them relaxed.

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It’s often easiest to have a document with your script printed out and ready to go for each usability test.

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4. Take advantage of software

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You’d never see a builder without a toolbox full of a useful assortment of tools. Likewise, software can make the life of a user research that much easier. The paper-based ways of recording information are still perfectly valid, but introducing custom tools can make both the logistics of user research and the actual sessions themselves much easier to manage.

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Take a tool like Calendly, for example. This is a powerful piece of scheduling software that almost completely takes over the endless back and forth of scheduling usability tests. Calendly acts as a middle man between you and your participants, allowing you to set the times you’re free to host usability tests, and then allowing participants to choose a session that suits them from these times.

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Our very own Reframer makes the task of running usability tests and analyzing insights that much easier. During your sessions, you can use Reframer to take comprehensive notes and apply tags like “positive” or “struggled” to different observations. Then, after you’ve concluded your tests, Reframer’s analysis function will help you understand wider themes that are present across your participants.

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There’s another benefit to using a tool like Reframer. Keeping all of your notes in place will mean you easily pull up data from past research sessions whenever you need to.

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5. Involve others

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Usability tests (and user interviews, for that matter) are a great opportunity to open up research to your wider organization. Whether it’s stakeholders, other members of your immediate team or even members of entirely different departments, giving them the chance to sit down with users will show them how their products are really being used. If nothing else, these sessions will help those within your organization build empathy with the people they’re building products for.

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There are quite a few ways to bring others in, such as:

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• To help you set up the research – This can be a helpful exercise for both you (the researcher) and the people you’re bringing in. Collaborate on the overarching research objectives, ask them what types of results they’d like to see and what sort of tasks they think could be used to gather these results.
• As notetakers – Having a dedicated notetaker will make your life as a researcher significantly easier. This means you’ll have someone to record any interesting observations while you focus on running the session. Just let them know what types of notes you’d like to see.
• To help you analyze the data – Once you’ve wrapped up your usability testing sessions, bring others in to help analyze the findings. There’s a good chance that an outside perspective will catch something you may miss. Also, if you’re bringing stakeholders into the analysis stage, they'll get a clearer picture of what it means and where the data came from.

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There are myriad other tips and best practices to keep in mind when usability testing, many of which we cover in our introductory page. Important considerations include taking good quality notes, carefully managing participants during the session (not giving them too much guidance) and remaining neutral throughout when answering their questions. If you feel like we’ve missed any really important points, feel free to leave a comment!

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Read more

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• Usability testing 101 – About to run your first usability test? Check out our handy 101 guide. You’ll also learn how you can use our qualitative research tool Reframer most effectively.
• What is usability testing? – Learn about the concepts of usability testing and how you can develop a plan for your own testing sessions.
• How to run fast and affordable usability tests with hard-to-reach, high-earning users – Finding the right participants for your usability tests can seem pretty tricky. Here’s how you can get the right people for your particular project.

Usability experts play an essential role in the user interface design process by evaluating the usability of digital products from a very important perspective - the users! Usability experts utilize various techniques such as heuristic evaluation, usability testing, and user research to gather data on how users interact with digital products and services. This data helps to identify design flaws and areas for improvement, leading to the development of user-friendly and efficient products.

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Heuristic evaluation is a usability research technique used to evaluate the user interface design of a digital product based on a set of ‘heuristics’ or ‘usability principles’. These heuristics are derived from a set of established principles of user experience design - attributed to the landmark article “Improving a Human-Computer Dialogue” published by web usability pioneers Jakob Nielsen and Rolf Molich in 1990. The principles focus on the experiential aspects of a user interface. 

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In this article, we’ll discuss what heuristic evaluation is and how usability experts use the principles to create exceptional design. We’ll also discuss how usability testing works hand-in-hand with heuristic evaluation, and how minimalist design and user control impact user experience. So, let’s dive in!

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Understanding Heuristic Evaluation

Heuristic evaluation helps usability experts to examine interface design against tried and tested rules of thumb. To conduct a heuristic evaluation, usability experts typically work through the interface of the digital product and identify any issues or areas for improvement based on these broad rules of thumb, of which there are ten. They broadly cover the key areas of design that impact user experience - not bad for an article published over 30 years ago!

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The ten principles are:

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1. Prevention error: Well-functioning error messages are good, but instead of messages, can these problems be removed in the first place? Remove the opportunity for slips and mistakes to occur.
2. Consistency and standards: Language, terms, and actions used should be consistent to not cause any confusion.
3. Control and freedom for users: Give your users the freedom and control to undo/redo actions and exit out of situations if needed.
4. System status visibility: Let your users know what’s going on with the site. Is the page they’re on currently loading, or has it finished loading?
5. Design and aesthetics: Cut out unnecessary information and clutter to enhance visibility. Keep things in a minimalist style.
6. Help and documentation: Ensure that information is easy to find for users, isn’t too large and is focused on your users’ tasks.
7. Recognition, not recall: Make sure that your users don’t have to rely on their memories. Instead, make options, actions and objects visible. Provide instructions for use too.
8. Provide a match between the system and the real world: Does the system speak the same language and use the same terms as your users? If you use a lot of jargon, make sure that all users can understand by providing an explanation or using other terms that are familiar to them. Also ensure that all your information appears in a logical and natural order.
9. Flexibility: Is your interface easy to use and it is flexible for users? Ensure your system can cater to users to all types, from experts to novices.
10. Help users to recognize, diagnose and recover from errors: Your users should not feel frustrated by any error messages they see. Instead, express errors in plain, jargon-free language they can understand. Make sure the problem is clearly stated and offer a solution for how to fix it.

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Heuristic evaluation is a cost-effective way to identify usability issues early in the design process (although they can be performed at any stage) leading to faster and more efficient design iterations. It also provides a structured approach to evaluating user interfaces, making it easier to identify usability issues. By providing valuable feedback on overall usability, heuristic evaluation helps to improve user satisfaction and retention.

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The Role of Usability Experts in Heuristic Evaluation

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Usability experts play a central role in the heuristic evaluation process by providing feedback on the usability of a digital product, identifying any issues or areas for improvement, and suggesting changes to optimize user experience.

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One of the primary goals of usability experts during the heuristic evaluation process is to identify and prevent errors in user interface design. They achieve this by applying the principles of error prevention, such as providing clear instructions and warnings, minimizing the cognitive load on users, and reducing the chances of making errors in the first place. For example, they may suggest adding confirmation dialogs for critical actions, ensuring that error messages are clear and concise, and making the navigation intuitive and straightforward.

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Usability experts also use user testing to inform their heuristic evaluation. User testing involves gathering data from users interacting with the product or service and observing their behavior and feedback. This data helps to validate the design decisions made during the heuristic evaluation and identify additional usability issues that may have been missed. For example, usability experts may conduct A/B testing to compare the effectiveness of different design variations, gather feedback from user surveys, and conduct user interviews to gain insights into users' needs and preferences.

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Conducting user testing with users that represent, as closely as possible, actual end users, ensures that the product is optimized for its target audience. Check out our tool Reframer, which helps usability experts collaborate and record research observations in one central database.

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Minimalist Design and User Control in Heuristic Evaluation

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Minimalist design and user control are two key principles that usability experts focus on during the heuristic evaluation process. A minimalist design is one that is clean, simple, and focuses on the essentials, while user control refers to the extent to which users can control their interactions with the product or service.

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Minimalist design is important because it allows users to focus on the content and tasks at hand without being distracted by unnecessary elements or clutter. Usability experts evaluate the level of minimalist design in a user interface by assessing the visual hierarchy, the use of white space, the clarity of the content, and the consistency of the design elements. Information architecture (the system and structure you use to organize and label content) has a massive impact here, along with the content itself being concise and meaningful.

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Incorporating minimalist design principles into heuristic evaluation can improve the overall user experience by simplifying the design, reducing cognitive load, and making it easier for users to find what they need. Usability experts may incorporate minimalist design by simplifying the navigation and site structure, reducing the number of design elements, and removing any unnecessary content (check out our tool Treejack to conduct site structure, navigation, and categorization research). Consistent color schemes and typography can also help to create a cohesive and unified design.

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User control is also critical in a user interface design because it gives users the power to decide how they interact with the product or service. Usability experts evaluate the level of user control by looking at the design of the navigation, the placement of buttons and prompts, the feedback given to users, and the ability to undo actions. Again, usability testing plays an important role in heuristic evaluation by allowing researchers to see how users respond to the level of control provided, and gather feedback on any potential hiccups or roadblocks.

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Usability Testing and Heuristic Evaluation

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Usability testing and heuristic evaluation are both important components of the user-centered design process, and they complement each other in different ways.

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Usability testing involves gathering feedback from users as they interact with a digital product. This feedback can provide valuable insights into how users perceive and use the user interface design, identify any usability issues, and help validate design decisions. Usability testing can be conducted in different forms, such as moderated or unmoderated, remote or in-person, and task-based or exploratory. Check out our usability testing 101 article to learn more.

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On the other hand, heuristic evaluation is a method in which usability experts evaluate a product against a set of usability principles. While heuristic evaluation is a useful method to quickly identify usability issues and areas for improvement, it does not involve direct feedback from users.

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Usability testing can be used to validate heuristic evaluation findings by providing evidence of how users interact with the product or service. For example, if a usability expert identifies a potential usability issue related to the navigation of a website during heuristic evaluation, usability testing can be used to see if users actually have difficulty finding what they need on the website. In this way, usability testing provides a reality check to the heuristic evaluation and helps ensure that the findings are grounded in actual user behavior.

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Usability testing and heuristic evaluation work together in the design process by informing and validating each other. For example, a designer may conduct heuristic evaluation to identify potential usability issues and then use the insights gained to design a new iteration of the product or service. The designer can then use usability testing to validate that the new design has successfully addressed the identified usability issues and improved the user experience. This iterative process of designing, testing, and refining based on feedback from both heuristic evaluation and usability testing leads to a user-centered design that is more likely to meet user needs and expectations.

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Conclusion

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Heuristic evaluation is a powerful usability research technique that usability experts use to evaluate digital product interfaces based on a set of established principles of user experience design. After all these years, the ten principles of heuristic evaluation still cover the key areas of design that impact user experience, making it easier to identify usability issues early in the design process, leading to faster and more efficient design iterations. Usability experts play a critical role in the heuristic evaluation process by identifying design flaws and areas for improvement, using user testing to validate design decisions, and ensuring that the product is optimized for its intended users.

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Minimalist design and user control are two key principles that usability experts focus on during the heuristic evaluation process. A minimalist design is clean, simple, and focuses on the essentials, while user control gives users the freedom and control to undo/redo actions and exit out of situations if needed. By following these principles, usability experts can create an exceptional design that enhances visibility, reduces cognitive load, and provides a positive user experience. 

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Ultimately, heuristic evaluation is a cost-effective way to identify usability issues at any point in the design process, leading to faster and more efficient design iterations, and improving user satisfaction and retention. How many of the ten heuristic design principles does your digital product satisfy?