User Testing Articles & Videos

  • User Panels: Maintenance and Governance

    A guide to sustaining user panels: governance, monitoring, maintenance, and evolution. Keep your recruitment panel organized, engaged, and reliable.

  • Quantity Yields Quality in UX: Iterative vs. Parallel vs. Competitive Design

    No design is perfect on the first try. Combining iteration, parallel design, and competitive testing helps teams move quickly, explore broadly, and make confident, evidence-based design decisions.

  • Post-Task vs. Post-Test Questionnaires in Quantitative Usability Testing

    Learn when and why to use post-task and post-test questionnaires in quantitative usability testing – and how combining both can help you pinpoint issues and improve UX.

  • 5 Reasons to Test Even When You “Know” the Answer

    Evidence from usability studies can be more convincing than what you say. Test even if you can easily determine the difference between good and bad designs.

  • A Case for Returning to In-Person Usability Testing

    In-person usability testing provides insights remote testing can miss. It offers unique benefits, such as building rapport, observing non-verbal cues, and providing immersive experiences for stakeholders that enhance understanding.

  • How to Conduct a Competitive Usability Evaluation

    Competitive usability evaluations help you understand how your competitors solve certain design problems and how you might outperform them. These evaluations are often performed at the beginning of design projects to shift their direction toward areas of opportunity.

  • Why Use 40 Participants in Quantitative UX Research?

    40 is the optimal sample size for many quantitative UX studies, ensuring a balance of precision, risk, and practicality.

  • User Testing with Older Adults

    When conducting usability testing with older adults, understand the unique needs of participants in this age group and adjust your test setup and tasks accordingly.

  • What Is User Research?

    The goal of user research is to identify ways to improve a product's design based on evidence rather than opinions.

  • International Usability Testing: 3 Factors to Consider

    International usability testing examines how people from different regions use products. For successful testing, decide on the format, ensure clear communication despite language barriers, and select a facilitator familiar with the local context.

  • Data vs. Findings vs. Insights

    Data refers to unanalyzed user observations, findings capture patterns among data points, and insights are the actionable opportunities based on research and business goals.

  • Always Pilot Test User Research Studies

    Running a pilot test for a user research study enables you to assess the study's effectiveness and avoid common problems in the main study.

  • Collecting Sensitive Demographic Data

    Demographic questions related to age, race, gender and income can be sensitive topics for research participants and need to be carefully framed by UX researchers.

  • When Thinking Aloud Fails

    To understand the needs of work-domain experts, use retrospective testing, expert walkthroughs, and interviews instead of think-aloud usability-testing studies.

  • Usability Testing with Users' Personal Information

    Usability Testing benefits from using participants’ personal information, but asking for this requires preparation and consideration.

  • Pilot Testing in UX Research

    Pilot testing involves conducting one or two test sessions to evaluate the design of a usability study. It checks for any issues before the actual testing phase, leading to more reliable results.

  • Usability Test Facilitation: 6 Mistakes to Avoid

    Become a better usability testing facilitator by avoiding common missteps, like asking leading questions or reacting to user behavior.

  • Informed Consent for UX Research

    Ethically sound UX research requires informed consent from a research participant. Informed consent means the participant fully understands what the study entails and the potential consequences of participating.

  • Help Users Think Aloud

    Help users think aloud by explaining what it is and why it's useful, reinforcing the behavior, and prompting along the way.

  • Protecting Participant Data: 6 Best Practices

    Research participants are more vulnerable than ever as researchers conduct remote usability tests, use third-party applications, and store data online. Protect participant privacy by adhering to best practices before, during, and after data collection.