Quantifying the value of User Research in 2024 

Knowing and understanding why and how your users use your product can be invaluable for getting to the nitty gritty of usability. Where they get stuck and where they fly through. Delving deep with probing questions into motivation or skimming over looking for issues can equally be informative.

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Usability testing can be done in several ways, each way has its benefits. Put super simply, usability testing literally is testing how useable your product is for your users. If your product isn't useable users will not stick around or very often complete their task, let alone come back for more.

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What is usability testing? 🔦

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Usability testing is a research method used to evaluate how easy something is to use by testing it with representative users.

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These tests typically involve observing a participant as they work through a series of tasks involving the product being tested. Having conducted several usability tests, you can analyze your observations to identify the most common issues.

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We go into the three main methods of usability testing:

1. Moderated and unmoderated
2. Remote or in person
3. Explorative, assessment or comparative

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1. Moderated or unmoderated usability testing 👉👩🏻💻

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Moderated usability testing is done in-person or remotely by a researcher who introduces the test to participants, answers their queries, and asks follow-up questions. Often these tests are done in real time with participants and can involve other research stakeholders. Moderated testing usually produces more in-depth results thanks to the direct interaction between researchers and test participants. However, this can be expensive to organize and run.

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Top tip: Use moderated testing to investigate the reasoning behind user behavior.

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Unmoderated usability testing is done without direct supervision; likely participants are in their own homes and/or using their own devices to browse the website that is being tested. And often at their own pace.  The cost of unmoderated testing is lower, though participant answers can remain superficial and making follow-up questions can be difficult.

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Top tip: Use unmoderated testing to test a very specific question or observe and measure behavior patterns.

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2. Research or in-person usability testing 🕵

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Remote usability testing is done over the internet or by phone. Allowing the participants to have the time and space to work in their own environment and at their own pace. This however doesn’t give the researcher much in the way of contextual data because you’re unable to ask questions around intention or probe deeper if the participant makes a particular decision. Remote testing doesn’t go as deep into a participant’s reasoning, but it allows you to test large numbers of people in different geographical areas using fewer resources.

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Top tip: Use remote testing when a large group of participants are needed and the questions asked can be direct and unambiguous.

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In-person usability testing, as the name suggests, is done in the presence of a researcher. In-person testing does provide contextual data as researchers can observe and analyze body language and facial expressions. You’re also often able to converse with participants and find out more about why they do something. However, in-person testing can be expensive and time-consuming: you have to find a suitable space, block out a specific date, and recruit (and often pay) participants.

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Top tip: In-person testing gives researchers more time and insight into motivation for decisions.

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3. Explorative, Assessment or comparative testing 🔍

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These three usability testing methods generate different types of information:

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Explorative testing is open-ended. Participants are asked to brainstorm, give opinions, and express emotional impressions about ideas and concepts. The information is typically collected in the early stages of product development and helps researchers pinpoint gaps in the market, identify potential new features, and workshop new ideas.

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Assessment research is used to test a user's satisfaction with a product and how well they are able to use it. It's used to evaluate general functionality.

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Comparative research methods involve asking users to choose which of two solutions they prefer, and they may be used to compare a product with its competitors.

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Top tip: Depending on what research is being done, and how much qualitative or quantitative data is wanted.

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Which method is right for you? 🧐

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Whether the testing is done in-person, remote, moderated or unmoderated will depend on your purpose, what you want out of the testing, and to some extent your budget. 

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Depending on what you are testing, each of the usability testing methods we explored here can offer an answer. If you are at the development stage of a product it can be useful to conduct a usability test on the entire product. Checking the intuitive usability of your website, to ensure users can make the best decisions, quickly. Or adding, changing or upgrading a product can also be the moment to check on a specific question around usability. Planning and understanding your objectives are key to selecting the right usability testing option for your project.

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Let's take a look at a couple of examples of usability testing.

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1. Lab based, in-person moderated testing - mid-life website

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Imagine you have a website that sells sports equipment. Over time your site has become cluttered and disorganized, much like a bricks and mortar store may. You’ve noticed a drop in sales in certain areas. How do you find out what is going wrong or where users are getting lost? Having an in-person, lab (or other controlled environment), moderated usability test with users you can set tasks, watch (and record) what they do.

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The researcher can literally be standing or sitting next to the participant throughout, recording contextual information such as how they interacted with the mouse, laptop or even the seat. Watching for cues as to the comfort of the participant and asking questions about why they make decisions can provide richer insights. Maybe they wanted purple yoga pants, but couldn’t find the ‘yoga’ section which was listed under gym rather than a clothing section.

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Meaning you can look at how your stock is organised, or even investigate undertaking a card sort. This provides robust and fully rounded feedback on users behaviours, expectations and experiences. Providing data that can directly be turned into actionable directives when redeveloping the website. 

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2. Remote, moderated assessment testing - app product development

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You are looking at launching an app for parents to access for information and updates for the school. It’s still in development stage and at this point you want to know how easy the app is to use. Setting some very specific set tasks for participants to complete the app can be sent to them and they can be left to complete (or not). Providing feedback and comments around the usability.

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The next step may be to use first click testing to see how and where the interface is clicked and where participants may be spending time, or becoming lost. Whilst the feedback and data gathered from this testing can be light, it will be very direct to the questions asked. And will provide data to back up (or possibly not) what assumptions were made.

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3. Moderated, In-person, explorative testing - new product development

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You’re right at the start of the development process. The idea is new and fresh and the basics are being considered. What better way to get an understanding of what your users’ truly want than an explorative study.

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Open-ended questions with participants in a one-on-one environment (or possibly in groups) can provide rich data and insights for the development team. Imagine you have an exciting new promotional app that you are developing for a client. There are similar apps on the market but none as exciting as what your team has dreamt up. By putting it (and possibly the competitors) to participants they can give direct feedback on what they like, love and loathe.

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They can also help brainstorm ideas or better ways to make the app work, or improve the interface. All of this done, before there is money sunk in development.

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Wrap up 🌯

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Key objectives will dictate which usability testing method will deliver the answers to your questions.

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Whether it’s in-person, remote, moderated or comparative with a bit of planning you can gather data around your users very real experience of your product. Identify issues, successes and failures. Addressing your user experience with real data, and knowledge can but lead to a more intuitive product.

In UX research we are told again and again that to ensure truly user-centered design, it’s important to test ideas with real users as early as possible. There are many benefits that come from introducing the voice of the people you are designing for in the early stages of the design process. The more feedback you have to work with, the more you can inform your design to align with real needs and expectations. In turn, this leads to better experiences that are more likely to succeed in the real world.It is not surprising then that paper prototypes have become a popular tool used among researchers. They allow ideas to be tested as they emerge, and can inform initial designs before putting in the hard yards of building the real thing. It would seem that they’re almost a no-brainer for researchers, but just like anything out there, along with all the praise, they have also received a fair share of criticism, so let’s explore paper prototypes a little further.

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What’s a paper prototype anyway? 🧐📖

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Paper prototyping is a simple usability testing technique designed to test interfaces quickly and cheaply. A paper prototype is nothing more than a visual representation of what an interface could look like on a piece of paper (or even a whiteboard or chalkboard). Unlike high-fidelity prototypes that allow for digital interactions to take place, paper prototypes are considered to be low-fidelity, in that they don’t allow direct user interaction. They can also range in sophistication, from a simple sketch using a pen and paper to simulate an interface, through to using designing or publishing software to create a more polished experience with additional visual elements.

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Showing a research participant a paper prototype is far from the real deal, but it can provide useful insights into how users may expect to interact with specific features and what makes sense to them from a basic, user-centered perspective. There are some mixed attitudes towards paper prototypes among the UX community, so before we make any distinct judgements, let's weigh up their pros and cons.

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Advantages 🏆

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• They’re cheap and fastPen and paper, a basic word document, Photoshop. With a paper prototype, you can take an idea and transform it into a low-fidelity (but workable) testing solution very quickly, without having to write code or use sophisticated tools. This is especially beneficial to researchers who work with tight budgets, and don’t have the time or resources to design an elaborate user testing plan.
• Anyone can do itPaper prototypes allow you to test designs without having to involve multiple roles in building them. Developers can take a back seat as you test initial ideas, before any code work begins.
• They encourage creativityFrom both the product teams participating in their design, but also from the users. They require the user to employ their imagination, and give them the opportunity express their thoughts and ideas on what improvements can be made. Because they look unfinished, they naturally invite constructive criticism and feedback.
• They help minimize your chances of failurePaper prototypes and user-centered design go hand in hand. Introducing real people into your design as early as possible can help verify whether you are on the right track, and generate feedback that may give you a good idea of whether your idea is likely to succeed or not.

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Disadvantages 😬

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• They’re not as polished as interactive prototypesIf executed poorly, paper prototypes can appear unprofessional and haphazard. They lack the richness of an interactive experience, and if our users are not well informed when coming in for a testing session, they may be surprised to be testing digital experiences on pieces of paper.
• The interaction is limitedDigital experiences can contain animations and interactions that can’t be replicated on paper. It can be difficult for a user to fully understand an interface when these elements are absent, and of course, the closer the interaction mimics the final product, the more reliable our findings will be.
• They require facilitationWith an interactive prototype you can assign your user tasks to complete and observe how they interact with the interface. Paper prototypes, however, require continuous guidance from a moderator in communicating next steps and ensuring participants understand the task at hand.
• Their results have to be interpreted carefullyPaper prototypes can’t emulate the final experience entirely. It is important to interpret their findings while keeping their limitations in mind. Although they can help minimize your chances of failure, they can’t guarantee that your final product will be a success. There are factors that determine success that cannot be captured on a piece of paper, and positive feedback at the prototyping stage does not necessarily equate to a well-received product further down the track.

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Improving the interface of card sorting, one prototype at a time 💡

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We recently embarked on a research project looking at the user interface of our card-sorting tool, OptimalSort. Our research has two main objectives — first of all to benchmark the current experience on laptops and tablets and identify ways in which we can improve the current interface. The second objective is to look at how we can improve the experience of card sorting on a mobile phone.

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Rather than replicating the desktop experience on a smaller screen, we want to create an intuitive experience for mobiles, ensuring we maintain the quality of data collected across devices.Our current mobile experience is a scaled down version of the desktop and still has room for improvement, but despite that, 9 per cent of our users utilize the app. We decided to start from the ground up and test an entirely new design using paper prototypes. In the spirit of testing early and often, we decided to jump right into testing sessions with real users. In our first testing sprint, we asked participants to take part in two tasks. The first was to perform an open or closed card sort on a laptop or tablet. The second task involved using paper prototypes to see how people would respond to the same experience on a mobile phone.

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Context is everything 🎯

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What did we find? In the context of our research project, paper prototypes worked remarkably well. We were somewhat apprehensive at first, trying to figure out the exact flow of the experience and whether the people coming into our office would get it. As it turns out, people are clever, and even those with limited experience using a smartphone were able to navigate and identify areas for improvement just as easily as anyone else. Some participants even said they prefered the experience of testing paper prototypes over a laptop. In an effort to make our prototype-based tasks easy to understand and easy to explain to our participants, we reduced the full card sort to a few key interactions, minimizing the number of branches in the UI flow.

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This could explain a preference for the mobile task, where we only asked participants to sort through a handful of cards, as opposed to a whole set.The main thing we found was that no matter how well you plan your test, paper prototypes require you to be flexible in adapting the flow of your session to however your user responds. We accepted that deviating from our original plan was something we had to embrace, and in the end these additional conversations with our participants helped us generate insights above and beyond the basics we aimed to address. We now have a whole range of feedback that we can utilize in making more sophisticated, interactive prototypes.

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Whether our success with using paper prototypes was determined by the specific setup of our testing sessions, or simply by their pure usefulness as a research technique is hard to tell. By first performing a card sorting task on a laptop or tablet, our participants approached the paper prototype with an understanding of what exactly a card sort required. Therefore there is no guarantee that we would have achieved the same level of success in testing paper prototypes on their own. What this does demonstrate, however, is that paper prototyping is heavily dependent on the context of your assessment.

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Final thoughts 💬

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Paper prototypes are not guaranteed to work for everybody. If you’re designing an entirely new experience and trying to describe something complex in an abstracted form on paper, people may struggle to comprehend your idea. Even a careful explanation doesn’t guarantee that it will be fully understood by the user. Should this stop you from testing out the usefulness of paper prototypes in the context of your project? Absolutely not.

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In a perfect world we’d test high fidelity interactive prototypes that resemble the real deal as closely as possible, every step of the way. However, if we look at testing from a practical perspective, before we can fully test sophisticated designs, paper prototypes provide a great solution for generating initial feedback.In his article criticizing the use of paper prototypes, Jake Knapp makes the point that when we show customers a paper prototype we’re inviting feedback, not reactions. What we found in our research however, was quite the opposite.

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In our sessions, participants voiced their expectations and understanding of what actions were possible at each stage, without us having to probe specifically for feedback. Sure we also received general comments on icon or colour preferences, but for the most part our users gave us insights into what they felt throughout the experience, in addition to what they thought.

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Further reading 🧠

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• Why You Only Need To Test With 5 Users - Nielsen Norman Group’s Jakob Nielsen explains reveals his thoughts on only using five users when conducting usability testing.
• Sketching for better mobile experiences - Lennart Hennigs explains how to sketch and why you should do it in an article for Smashing Magazine.
• Paper prototypes work as well as software prototypes -  Bob Bailey explains why he thinks paper prototypes are just as good as software prototypes for usability testing.

Simply put, ResearchOps is about making sure your research operations are robust, thought through and managed. 

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Having systems and processes around your UX research and your team keep everyone (and everything) organized. Making user research projects quicker to get started and more streamlined to run. And robust sharing, socializing, and knowledge storage means that everyone can understand the research insights and findings and put these to use - across the organization. And even better, find these when they need them. 

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Using the same tools across the team allows the research team to learn from each other, and previous research projects and be able to compare apples with apples, with everyone included. Bringing the team together across tools, research and results.

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We go into more detail in our ebook ResearchOps Checklist about exactly what you can do to make sure your research team is running at its best. Let’s take a quick look at 5 way to ensure you have the grounding for a successful ResearchOps team.

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1. Knowledge management 📚

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What do you do with all of the insights and findings of a user research project? How do you store them, how do you manage the insights, and how do you share and socialize?

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Having processes in place that manage this knowledge is important to the longevity of your research. From filing to sharing across platforms, it all needs to be standardized so everyone can search, find and share.

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2. Guidelines and process templates 📝

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Providing a framework for how to run research projects is are important. Building on the knowledge base from previous research can improve research efficiencies and cut down on groundwork and administration. Making research projects quicker and more streamlined to get underway.

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3. Governance 🏛

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User research is all about people, real people. It is incredibly important that any research be legal, safe, and ethical. Having effective governance covered is vital.

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4. Tool stack 🛠

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Every research team needs a ‘toolbox’ that they can use whenever they need to run card sorts, tree tests, usability tests, user interviews, and more. But which software and tools to use?

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Making sure that the team is using the same tools also helps with future research projects, learning from previous projects, and ensuring that the information is owned and run by the organization (rather than whichever individuals prefer). Reduce logins and password shares, and improve security with organization-wide tools and platforms. 

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5. Recruitment 👱🏻👩👩🏻👧🏽👧🏾

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Key to great UX research is the ability to recruit quality participants - fast! Having strong processes in place for screening, scheduling, sampling, incentivizing, and managing participants needs to be top of the list when organizing the team.

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Wrap Up 💥

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Each of these ResearchOps processes are not independent of the other. And neither do they flow from one to the other. They are part of a total wrap around for the research team, creating processes, systems and tools that are built to serve the team. Allowing them to focus on the job of doing great research and generating insights and findings that develop the very best user experience. 

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Afterall, we are creating user experiences that keep our users engaged and coming back. Why not look at the teams user experience and make the most of that. Freeing time and space to socialize and share the findings with the organization.