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.