Fireside chat with Kelvin and Liam from Tanda Pt. 2

Last week we went through Part 1 of Tanda’s user testing experiences. We covered the stats and data that justified user testing, best practices to approaching your boss and Kelvin’s top 3 tips for user testing and UX. This week we’re touching on getting the right people, how actions speak in testing, finding the time and Liam’s top 3 tips for user testing and UX.

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Not only is it important to get the right results, it’s important to get the right people. For Tanda, this was people who had never heard of them or their functionalities before. Once Tanda decided on this pool of participants, they got in touch with Askable. Askable handled the participant recruiting process so Tanda could focus on the user testing sessions.

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After running the tests, a lot of Tanda’s previous assumptions were met. However, the user tests highlighted areas that weren’t discussed internally, particularly disconnections to the product along with other holes which they weren’t expecting. “It made it evident that we need to make it more personal and accustomed to that journey” said Kelvin about the sign-up flow. From this data, Tanda found adding more information after the form, carousel and first clock in would make a huge difference in getting users to the desktop application.

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The Tanda team took this information and added a call-to-action in the app, past the form, carousel and first clock in, where they watched the conversion rate in the time clock to MyTanda increase from 18.9% to 26%. The immediate result demonstrates the value of user tests and how simple changes lead to large results.

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You don’t have to spend a crazy amount of time finding all the bugs and making changes to your design, you just need to find what the next steps are that can have the most impact. Tanda made their changes and hit live within the timespan of a week. Once you have relevant data, start making changes to your design and get ready to set it live as quickly as possible. You want to be able to continue validating your user experience design.

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“User testing not only makes the business and the product better, but makes you as a designer better.”

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Top tips from Liam on running your user test

Find the why

When you see a user do something unexpected or “wrong”, don’t just note what they did, ask why they did it. This is the biggest value of in-person user testing – videos and analytics only give the “What”. You’ll often find that their response is something you’d never even considered.

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Try to give as little guidance as possible beyond the user’s main tasks/goals

When users are using your product in the wild, they won’t have a designer over their shoulder helping them out. When a tester gets frustrated, try not to jump in and give them the solution.

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Don’t be too emotionally connected to your designs

Even though you and your colleagues may understand and appreciate your designs, your users may not. If the user has trouble, you may need to sacrifice your pixel-perfect masterpiece, so don’t get too attached.