USability Test Planning

Every test needs a good plan! I always start the process of setting up a usability test by writing a plan based off conversations I’ve had with the team about their questions and goals for learning.

Doing this write-up helps organize logistical details, and communicate those with teammates I need to collaborate with in order to execute the test. Depending on whom we’re recruiting and what environment we’re testing in, that could be one or several collaborators.

Before I schedule any participants, this plan is given a careful review with the Product Manager or other business stakeholder to ensure we’re aiming to learn the right information from the test. Smaller, moderated studies will give us more understanding of people’s mental schemas and usefulness of the feature. Larger, unmoderated tests give us more information about the interaction design and usability.

DetaileD Team Report

Just like content for a website or product, reports I write need to have the audience in mind. When I’m writing a report that’s meant to be highly actionable for engineers and designers working on the details of a user flow, I’ll break down my insights by screen.

In addition to insights, each report includes recommendations, as well. Some recommendations are specific, while others are for additional research needs that have been identified. Whatever level they’re written at, the rule of thumb is that recommendations are actionable.

Democracy of information is very important to me. I also always include links to the videos and notes for each test. Any individual can watch clips or entire tests to further their understanding of the results.

High-Level stakeholder Report

Sometimes my audience is stakeholders within the business, who don’t need to be involved in the details of interaction design or usability issues. Especially for high-profile projects, I’ll often separate a summary of insights they’ll be interested in to a section of the whole report. Or, as in this case, I might write a separate report.

This is a report I prepared to share in a presentation format to an Executive Team. This was their first look at feedback from users about a new, important feature. The results showed some minor concerns for us to iterate solutions for, but gave strong indications for success of the feature as a whole. I shared this news in a short presentation with video clips, metrics and short points of analysis.