User testing tips for the Design Sprint
Design Sprint is trending nowadays. People from different profession started learning and implementing it at a certain level. Some are trying to get used to it by running Sprints regularly because it gets you insightful outcome through designing, prototyping, and testing in a week.
One major question I get from the Design Sprint learners is, how to do user testing effectively? So, here I’m with some tips for that. They are about how to be proactive & effective at every stage of the user tests. You can always be creative & tricky on your own to do things better.
Don’t know what is the Design sprint? Refer the following links.
a. GV Design Sprint
b. Design Sprint 2.0
Now, let’s start with the tips.
Finding the target audience
👉 1) Try to find out who the target audience is before the Design Sprint. Or you can wait till a solution(s) gets finalized for the prototyping and testing by the decider in the Sprint. Once it’s finalized, you will know who will be the target audience for the user testing.
Get one person who can start preparing for the user testers’ recruitment as soon as you know the target audience.
Recruiting user testers
👉 2) Create a Google Form or Typeform with necessary questions to ask to hire user testers. Ask questions that can help you identify who the good testers will be. E.g., if you’re testing an e-commerce product, ask questions like how often do they buy online, how much amount do they spend on average, which sites do they buy from, etc. in the form.
Ask for their email, phone number, timezone, etc. (as per your need) to contact them for screening purpose. Do not ask unnecessary questions.
Also, tell them that their details won’t be shared with anyone in the form.
👉 3) Decide a reward for the user testers who get selected and complete the user test. It will motivate them to appear and give their best in the user tests. Amazon vouchers or something similar is a good reward.
👉 4) Use Craigslist, online forums, groups on Facebook/Linkedin, Reddit, your network on Facebook/LinkedIn or other platforms where you can find your target audience. Create a post about why you’re looking for user testers, what you want to test, what will they get (reward), the Google Form or Typeform link on the preferred platform.
Or create ads on Facebook or LinkedIn for a day which will give you 30–50 user testing applicants.
If you are testing for an existing product/service, hire existing users (active, inactive both) for user tests.
👉 5) Finalize 6–7 user testers through a screening process. You’re going to do only 5 user tests, but it’s good to have 1–2 testers as a backup. Ask them to remain available for the whole day. Give them a smaller reward for being a backup tester. If you use them in a real user test, give them another reward that top 5 selected user testers get.
You should reach to backup testers for the user test when anyone from the 5 testers is not able to join for the test, or you’re not satisfied with the feedback you’ve got from any user test.
Book time slots with all 5 user testers and send them a calendar or meeting invites.
If you’re going to do remote tests, make sure they have the necessary technical setup (a laptop or PC with a good configuration, a webcam, a required browser, an online meeting software, etc.).
Prototype privacy
👉 6) Confidentiality of the product/prototype mostly matters. So don’t forget to sign an NDA with all the user testers.
Running user tests
👉 7) Schedule your first user test early in the morning (around 9 am) so that if there is an issue with the prototype or something else, you can notice it early and get time to solve it for the rest of the user tests. It’s always good to have 30–45 minutes of break-time between the first two user tests; it gives you time to solve any issues that appear in the first user test.
👉 8) It’s important to tell user testers that you’re testing the prototype, not them. They may click on buttons or links that don’t work because you don’t want to test them or they are not a part of the user test. In that case, you can tell them that everything doesn’t work; you are testing only a few features/modules of it.
👉 9) Have a free-flowing conversation during the user tests so that you can get detailed feedback.
Don’t ask Yes-no questions. E.g., Do you think this feature is a nice to have? Do you like the new button?
It’s good to have a user testing script, but it’s not necessary.
Test all the important modules of the prototype that favors the Long-term Goal and answers the Sprint Questions (“Can We” questions) in the user tests. E.g., if you are testing a new checkout flow for your e-commerce app, don’t spend much time on Sign-in & Registration screens, or try to skip them smartly. Spend more time in knowing how users react to the new checkout flow.
👉 10) Guide user testers to take the next steps. You can ask them incomplete & tricky questions like, what do you think of if I click on…, it seems clicking on XYZ button will…, etc.
I hope these tips will help.
If you have any tip or question of your own, please share them in the comments below. Design Sprint learners & fans will love it. 💛
Happy Sprinting! 🚀
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Thank you!
