Hi there. Welcome to this video. We've arrived at the most important  part of the whole thing. It's actually doing the testing. Okay? So this is where the user experience thing happens.

Okay? So we've done our research, we have built our mockups,  and now we need a and we've found our test subjects. Now we're gonna go do our testing. So we're gonna talk about, um,  the different methods you can use. Um, we're gonna just skip lightly over the, um, using kind  of the digital online one. 'cause there's kind of like, there's two ways of doing it.

There is doing an online, um,  or doing kind of in-person stuff. Now, the online stuff is  where we talked about user testing.com  or there's some other alternatives like, um, uh,  the Envision app has stuff built into it as well. And there's another one called us bill.com. Go check that out. But that is literally sending them a mockup  and then sending you videos back. So we've kind of covered that.

So let's talk about the other  methods and probably let's talk, let's start  with the most important, and  that is the observational testing. Okay? Also known as interview testing. It just means in-person stuff,  where we actually sit down together and, and, you know,  and work with our users to see what they're doing. So here is our happy two little, uh,  our tester and our testie. Okay?

And smiling, looking good using laptop. Okay. But, um, what, what, let's go through the,  the different techniques for running a successful interview  now, um, by far doing this observational interview where,  um, you set tasks  and you watch the person do it, this is  by far the most value. Um, you'll get outta your user testing. Um, it's the best I've ever got. Okay?

The online stuff is cool and they send you stuff  and you can watch the videos, but really a lot  of extra stuff comes out of this kind of induced stuff. It takes more time, it costs more. Um, and, you know, there's a lot more work involved,  but you do get a lot more benefits out of it. Now the first thing you need to do is make sure  that it's a test of tasks and not of opinions. So what you're gonna do is you're gonna write down some  tasks on a piece of paper and hand it to your test subject. Okay?

You don't wanna start talking to them  and give it to them that way,  because often you can,  you turn it into a bit of a sales pitch. I know I try and do it, I try not to,  but it's really hard not to. So what you do is you draft out your tasks beforehand,  so it's very clear and you've got really, um,  I guess a nice kind of control across different people  that you are testing and you're less likely  to turn it into a sales pitch  and try to convince them that what you are doing is,  you know, uh, you know, trying  to convince them of what they should be doing. So tasks, not opinion. So, um, when you're doing things, uh,  like a a task example would be, um,  book an intro course for photography. That's a task.

Um, in terms of opinion, um,  you don't wanna be asking questions like, uh,  would you pay for this? Okay. Because although that's, you know,  like what's gonna happen is  they're gonna tell you what you want to hear. What you wanna be doing is actually watching them use  the site, okay? Give them tasks to do, but don't ask them what they might do  or might not like, okay? Because that sort of stuff,  what people won't be honest, okay?

What you wanna see is actually set a task, hand them the bit  of paper and say, go do this. And then watch them. Okay? It's amazing the nonverbal, um, stuff you get from them  by watching them, okay? So you could, they, you set them a task. You say, I want you to book a photography course.

And they go off and try and click and scroll and find,  and it's, it's those kind of things  that they might not tell you, okay? Or be able to communicate when they're voicing over,  like say some of the digital ones. That is the real kind of benefits  for these interview questions. When you are writing down your tasks,  make sure you don't use kind of terms that are on the site. So, um, in an old kind of site that I used to build  or my New Zealand site, one of the first ones is I,  I named the topics. Um, uh, what do they call them?

Uh, instead of calling it intro, I call 'em Jumpstart  and the, uh, the advanced stuff I call masterclass just  to be, I don't know, just to be fancy with it really. And, um, what I'd do with my tasks, as I'd say to them, go  and book, uh, Photoshop Jumpstart  and they'd go and do it really easily. Okay? So, 'cause I gave them the language  and accidentally I didn't really think about it. But what happens is they go off  and they find something called Jumpstart and they book it. And if somebody said to me,  why I'm book people booking the entry courses, you're like,  well the user testing said it was fine.

It's 'cause I kinda led them into it. I told them what to go book. So instead of saying go pick the jumpstart, I'd say go  and pick a course, a Photoshop course  that's at your current level. Okay? So I'm not giving them kind  of like hints of what I want 'em to do. I just want to kind of give them a general sense  or a general task, but without  using too much of the language.

'cause if you use the actual language, they'll find  that pretty easily and kind  of makes the test pretty useless. Now list out all your tasks on a separate bit of paper  and when you hand it to them, um, that way  that if you've got a user that's really slow, okay? And it happens, some of them are gonna be really fast  and we're really slow and you just don't have time to get  through all 20 questions. You don't wanna feel like they're, like, you don't want to. Like if they've, they, they can see 20 questions  and you know, you've booked them in for an hour  and they're only at question two,  they're gonna start stressing about, oh, I'm slow. And so what you wanna do is just have them separate,  keep them away from them  and just give them a, um, you know, give them a new task  and when they're finished it, move on to the next one.

Some people are gonna get through them all,  some people are only gonna get through half of them,  but keeping them separate means that, yeah,  not gonna stress anybody out. And the other thing is that sometimes you find  that you've booked this person in,  but they're totally the wrong person  or they're super hung over  or something's not quite right about them. And what you can do is you can call it  after a couple of questions, okay? So you don't have to kind of like endure an hours worth  of testing that you know is not gonna work  for what you needed to do. Now what you're looking to get out of this is okay, answer  to the questions, but really you're looking for, um,  other kind of nonverbal stuff. So we talked about it earlier, but, but looking at their  kind of attitudes and their impressions,  it really helps you, especially for your persona,  refine that persona.

Okay? You might know it,  but this might be the first time you've ever met  somebody in this kind of zone. If you've never met, uh, if you've got a website for, um,  elderly potters  and you've never met an elderly potter, okay? And this might be your chance to move  and you've kind of come up with a persona,  but it's not that you actually meet them to realize, oh,  okay, I didn't realize this. And it's that kind of nonverbal stuff that you'll pick up. Um, and impressions about them that'll really help you, um,  both with your testing and kind  of redefine your, um, persona.

Now when you hand them the questions, um, explain to them,  you can hand the questions and then you're not gonna,  um, you know, help them out. You just want them to carry on, um, until they either get  to an end or they say, look, I'm stuck. Okay? So you don't wanna be kind  of like queuing them and get them go along. So just watch them do it. And what you're looking for is you just watching them just  kind of, you know, casually next to them  and explain that you're gonna take some notes, okay?

And screw all your notes down. You get  to use your post-it notes again, which is awesome. Okay? So keep everything on post-it notes. 'cause what you can start to do is group them afterwards. Once you've gone through a few users,  you can actually start grouping those together, um,  to get a consensus and, you know, for your ideas  or what happened, or common problems or common successes.

Now where to do it, just do it in your office. Okay? Um, it's the easiest way. Get 'em to come along to your office on a certain date at a  certain time and make sure you do a practice run first. Like with your first one,  what you'll find is you'll get the person in  and you don't wanna waste it getting used to how  to run a user test. So just make sure you practice with a colleague  or your partner just so that you understand kind  of the types of problems you might have and explain to them.

Um, it can be quite awkward, um,  because you're gonna hand them notes  and not talk to them that much,  but explain to them in the beginning say, look, uh,  you know, I'm a user, um, you a user experience designer  and how it's gonna work is that to, to make this successful  for me, I need to, um, you know, stay, uh,  quite quiet through this exam. I'm gonna give you the paper, um, and I'm gonna take notes. And, um, you know, it's, it's, it, it helps me at least, um,  I'm, I'm kind of naturally a teacher and quite bubbly and,  and, but during user testing you've gotta be an observer  rather than a kind of, you know,  coach them along and help them out. So just make sure that you tell 'em at the beginning  and often that can make it a lot easier. Now remember, this is not a sales pitch. That's probably my biggest thing is  I really want them to like it.

Okay? But, uh, if they leave hating the product, it's a bit  of a blow to the ego. But actually that's a really successful user test. And actually the most, you know, the most useful out  of a useful test, uh, user test  because if they don't like it and they can't make it work  and they don't gear we to on it, you can go off  and really quickly iterate. You could do it that afternoon, okay? Is go and make a new mockup and you know,  and do some more user testing  and that will take you all of half a data reset up.

Whereas if you go off  and build this thing without any user testing, you could,  you could spend months building a product or an app  or a website and for nobody to like it  because you've just got some basic things wrong. You've called it jumpstart like I did  instead of intro, okay. Or masterclass instead of advanced. Okay? So those sorts of things here  and now, um, are really useful. Okay?

So that's it for interviews are now, um, just  so you know, out of the interview, kind  of like observational, um, testing. I do that probably once in every 10  or 15 user tests, maybe even 20. Um, mainly because big new projects okay, require them  and you can do them and they're awesome,  but then you end up doing iterations  and kind of smaller changes. And I find, um, the types of clients that I deal with maybe,  um, is that it's just easier to go out  to a really quick online test. They're not as useful, okay? But at the beginning of a nice project, great, let's do it.

Let's invest the time and the money. Okay? But once we get into the smaller changes,  I often use either kind of, uh, user testing.com  or I find existing clients to get them to test, okay? I've got some super users  and some kind of, um, you know, people  that are quite involved with the website  or the business that are quite good as um, personas. So I use them quite heavily. So don't worry if you're not doing too many interviews  and you're doing a lot more online things, it's okay.

Alright, let's go and look at some of the other, uh,  user testing, not just we've done interviews  and we've done kind of digital stuff. Let's look at some of the other ones  that you might get involved with.