Have you ever been on a site where cryptic labels or jargon were used for the navigation options? Or have you ever resorted to entering a Google search instead of exploring a site because the content was scattered and not organized in a way that you found intuitive? It’s highly possible that these sites were designed with little consideration for the user and user input was not collected during the life cycle of the project. Spending time with users or performing user research was probably viewed as overhead or a “nice to have” rather than incorporated into the overall project budget. Often, user research is not viewed as mission-critical and instead is seen as a step standing in the way of getting the project completed on time.
Fortunately, there are ways to include user research without blowing your budget. A simple yet eye-opening approach to gather user input is card sorting. The beauty of the card sort is to see how representative users of your site would naturally organize content from your site.
There are two primary types of card sorts:
- Open card sort. Users are given a sample content list and asked to create groups as they see fit and label the groups they created. This is typically done for a new website project and conducted before the information architecture has been finalized.
- Closed card sort. Users are given a sample content list as well as predefined groups that they will need to use to group the content into. This may be done to validate assumptions made after an open card sort or to refine existing categories (e.g., top navigation options) during a website redesign.
Card sorting is flexible and easy to administer because it can be conducted in person or remotely. And all you need is either a set of index cards or an online card sorting tool. Index cards work well because users easily work with the cards by spreading them out in any manner they choose as they begin to assemble the groups. However, there are some online tools that are effective in emulating the experience you get with index cards:
- Optimal Sort is one of the most popular card sorting tools. It has an easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface. And you can also benefit from some analysis reports that are automatically generated by this tool. Here is a video on how to create an Optimal Sort study: http://vimeo.com/14204460
- iCardSort is an iPad app that was created to replicate the feeling of physical cards.
While online card sorting tools can give you the flexibility to conduct the study without a moderator, it’s beneficial to have a moderator there to gain a deeper understanding of the user’s rationale and interpretation of the content. So as users organize content into what they deem are the logical groupings, they are asked to describe their thought process through a think-aloud protocol. This gives insight into their mental models and answers the following types of questions:
- What do users find easy to organize?
- What do users find difficult to organize?
- How do users describe the content or what do they name groups?
- How do people want information grouped – by subject, process or content type?
- Do they understand the content?
- What content would they organize into more than one group?
- Were there any patterns (e.g., similar content groupings or labels)? Or what were the areas of high disagreement across users?
With answers to the questions above, the team will be better equipped to design an experience that is positioned to meet the needs and expectations of your target users. Integrating user research approaches like card sorting can act as useful checkpoints, but, more importantly, provides the team with valuable insights that will make them better advocates for your customers and help create a positive experience for your brand. This is a technique that is best conducted early in the process – ideally before wireframes are created or before any development begins – when there is less risk to the project at large. With simple card sorting exercises, incorporating user research into the overall project shouldn’t be a daunting overtaking and is actually fairly easy to integrate.
More on Card Sorting
- Interview with card sorting guru: http://www.infodesign.com.au/uxpod/donnaspencer
- Definitive guide: http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/card_sorting_a_definitive_guide
Do your customers find your brand’s digital presence easy to use and learn or difficult and confusing? Are your customers satisfied with how your products work? The answer to this question can be traced to the usability of your offerings. ISO defines usability as “The extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use.”
Usability is important to customers and often differentiates brands among their competitors. Look at Apple’s and Google’s success. Many of our clients ask their search to work like Google’s, and many of us can’t resist Apple’s products because of their commitment to simplicity, making them easy to use.
When customers use certain products or offerings, they have specific goals they need to accomplish or want access to information they believe those offerings provide. When customers experience your digital offerings, they don’t want to spend a lot of time figuring out how to use them. If they have a difficult time, they won’t be successful and will likely leave unhappy.
Get Your Design in Front of Customers
Usability testing is one of the most common techniques to assess usability and put your design to the test. During this process, observation is key – what customers say is often not what they do. You will find where the design hits the mark, as well as where users struggle that you may not have expected they would or find out there are aspects of the design they overlook.
Unlike focus groups where the collective wisdom of many is gathered, usability testing has customers participate in one-on-one sessions and asks them to complete common tasks as they normally would. Therefore, recruiting participants for usability testing based on relevant behaviors rather than marketing segments is key to ensure that you are seeing the right customers completing tasks they have performed before or would likely do on their own.
Based on what was learned from usability testing, you might need to make some simple tweaks like creating more intuitive link labels. Or perhaps you might find there were some showstoppers; for example, finding that most users were unable to complete the registration process. By seeing customers interact with your brand, your team is able to make more informed decisions on behalf of your customers.
Usability Is Not an Add-On
But usability should not simply be assessed with one usability test. It’s an approach that should be incorporated throughout the life cycle of the design process. When usability is a priority throughout the process, inefficiencies in design interactions can be caught early enough to make the necessary fixes when they are less costly and easier to make. Or once your product is in your customer’s hands, usability improvements can contribute to a reduction in customer support calls because customers can use your products without anyone’s assistance or they experience productivity improvements because they complete tasks more quickly.
As 2012 approaches, I’d like to propose that you make usability one of your New Year’s resolutions. Separate your brand from other competitors by making usability an integral part of your digital brand presence.
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Since you’re probably either still hunkering down to avoid the lingering effects of this year’s extreme August weather or basking in the glow of your summer vacation, it’s hard to muster more than lackluster holiday spirit. Regardless of your spirit, it’s never too early to begin considering an e-commerce strategy for the holidays.
All indicators predict that this year will be the biggest for e-commerce thus far. It follows a trend that sees online sales increasing from year to year and outpacing non-e-commerce growth (see chart below). The 2010 holiday season brought forth the singularly biggest day for online sales yet, topping $1 billion in online sales on Cyber Monday (the Monday after Thanksgiving). Consumers are also beginning to do their Black Friday shopping from the comfort of their couch, frustrated by jostling through crowds and waiting in long lines, only to find that what they wanted is already sold out.
In general, e-commerce outperforms same-store sales at many chains, thanks to shoppers choosing to research products online and then using the convenience of online shopping to complete the transaction. This trend holds for both business goods and consumer goods. Traditional brick-and-mortar businesses such as Williams-Sonoma have online sales accounting for 33% of total sales, and Staples counts online as 40% of their total sales.
So how do you capitalize on this trend? You may be concerned an e-commerce presence will snipe traffic from your brick-and-mortar stores. But if you embrace both, the two venues can provide your customers the choice they demand while providing you sales traffic between the channels.
For instance, in-store pickup of products ordered online increases impulse add-on purchases in-store. Consumers who can’t find the options they want in-store can go online to order exactly what they want, ensuring that your brand gets the sale. As long as salespeople are well trained and there’s perhaps a kiosk in-store, brick-and-mortars may even be able to stock less inventory on shelves.
Simply put, ignore digital channels at the cost to your bottom line.
An article aptly titled “Online back-to-school shoppers to spend 40% more than those who only shop in stores” from July 28, 2011, offers, “Specifically, online back-to-school shoppers will spend a third more than all shoppers for shoes and school supplies, and fully 68% more for electronics and computer related goods. Like most everyone, online back-to-school shoppers have felt the economic pinch, and to that end plan to shop for sales more often, comparison shop online, find and use coupons, and buy more generic or store brands, among other money-saving strategies. Much of that research will be facilitated by smartphones and/or tablet devices that many online back-to-school shoppers already own.”
What Features Do Consumers Want in Their Online Shopping Experience?
- Free Shipping – comScore’s postmortem of the 2010 holiday season reports that free shipping was used in more than half of all 2010 holiday e-commerce transactions, up significantly from 2009.
- Gift Ideas – Help consumers figure out the perfect gift for a hard-to-buy-for person. See Amazon’s best-in-class gift ideas.
- Comparison Shopping – Users want to feel that they are getting the most bang for their buck. Review Forbes’ best in class.
- Research – Consumers want to know more about the products they’re considering. Specifications and trade write-ups help consumers understand what the professionals think, but ratings and reviews from other consumers also strongly influence purchasing decisions. In a National Retail Federation (NRF) survey, shoppers were asked about how the economy was changing their behavior: 30.7% planned to do more comparison shopping online and 12.3% planned to shop more online in general.
- Pick Up In-Store – Consumers who have waited until the last minute to purchase gifts appreciate the convenience of shopping online, but with the option to pick it up in-store so shipping isn’t a factor.
- Coupons – Budget-conscious consumers who are trying to save money can be driven to make a purchase, given digital coupon incentives delivered though the website, email or mobile channels. In the same NRF survey, over 36% of respondents were likely to use more coupons. According to an article in eMarketer about 2011 back-to-school shopping (a good predictor of holiday sales,) “…the internet is viewed as a valuable source for saving money. The leading reason why shoppers…planned to shop online was because they expected to find better discounts (70%), were able to research prices and products (63%) and avoid potential out-of-stock items in-store (40%).”
Create a Positive User Experience
Your user experience is the digital reflection of your brick-and-mortar; keep it friendly, stocked and easy to use.
To deliver the most impact to your busy holiday shoppers, simply maintaining an e-commerce site just isn’t enough. Usability is key.
- Users must be able to quickly find a specific item (like using an intelligent search), but the site itself must facilitate browsing with clearly defined categories and hierarchies.
- Upselling or cross-selling is also important, using “products like this” or “customers who bought this also bought this.”
- Clear product images with multiple views and the ability to enlarge the image give consumers the confidence to click the buy button.
- A detailed description of the product, including dimensions, colors and other key attributes, must be readily available.
- Lastly, a site must instill consumer trust by displaying guarantees, return policies and accurate shipping dates.
Promotional Channels
The more touchpoints that are available to consumers, the more likely they’ll find you and purchase from you.
An important factor to a successful e-commerce holiday season is driving high traffic to your online product offerings. Money is being left on the table if you don’t consider using multiple channels to deliver the most impact to your busy holiday shoppers:
- Mobile – Mobile couponing or QR codes to provide more detailed descriptions and/or ratings and reviews. It’s particularly helpful for on-the-go consumers to find your location.
- Geolocating – Offer specials for check-in with Foursquare, Gowalla or Facebook Locations.
- Facebook – Integrated shopping, sales alerts, specials, recommendations, single sign-on to reduce cart abandonment.
- Twitter – An ideal channel for promoting sales alerts, specials, recommendations that can generate social media buzz.
- Online – Sales, free shipping, printable/online coupons, product comparisons, consumer ratings and reviews, in-store pickup (to increase impulse purchases), adequate inventory, callouts and/or billboards.
- Email – Hold “secret sales” or a “deal of the day” and offer other incentives for email sign-up.
Test It for Success
Unavailable or broken sites are like locking your doors on Black Friday.
By far, the single most important preparation for a successful holiday season is testing to ensure your servers and e-commerce engines can handle the huge volume. Nothing frustrates a consumer more than getting a busy server error or spending time browsing and shopping only to discover they cannot check out. All your investments and innovations for successful online holiday sales can be ruined by poor server performance. Make it a priority to ensure your technical infrastructure is in place to support the demand from your varied advertising channels.
A personal anecdote: There is a certain big-box retailer that offers fantastic Black Friday deals. I’ve been at their doors at 6 a.m. twice, shopped their sales, only to discover the slow-moving checkout line extends all the way around the store, guaranteeing a two-hour wait. I abandoned my basket the first year, and the second year, I checked the state of the impossible checkout line before even bothering to shop. I never returned to that retailer to purchase holiday gifts. Last year, I decided to try their online shop and see if I could get some of those amazing deals. Their site was incredibly slow, but I persevered, only to have my cart time out and empty at checkout. At this point, I won’t shop that retailer ever again. And yes, I tell my friends about those experiences, increasing the probability that they also will not shop that retailer during the holidays.
Remember, when your eye is on the bottom line, online and offline shopping can be complementary experiences providing great service to your consumers. Do you want happy brand advocates or vocal brand dissenters?
So while the leaves may not yet have begun to change, it’s time to plan your e-commerce strategy and spiff up your online store for the holidays. Your brick-and-mortar stores would never advance into the holiday season without adequate preparation. Your online presence should be no different.
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Often when we approach a new solution, clients request to emulate the features or designs of many popular or successful websites. Perhaps we, too, look to the competitive space for website inspiration where a popular site has been highly successful or well tested. In e-commerce, giants like Amazon are constantly refining and testing their marketplace to provide the best usable and successful online experience. Clients may often say “if it works for Amazon, it will work for us.” But a closer look at the issue reveals this myth can be a dangerous solution for your brand.
Many times clients ask to look to these popular sites when approaching their solutions. These are often perceived as the shining stars to mimic for instant success. And why not, these sites have proven results. With limited time and slim budgets, it is often easier to copy these designs or features in hopes of instant and satisfying results.
Copying a design at some level is always part of a design process. The imitation is the greatest form of flattery after all, right? Well, before we fall prey to the blind pitfalls of copycat designs, we must first understand the difference between inspirations and bold-faced copying.
For example, while Amazon has an amazing set of well-tested features and functionality, they do not always perform as successfully on other e-commerce websites as easily. For example, in the first month after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows came out, Amazon got 1,805 reviews, whereas Target received only three reviews, despite both selling 2 million copies each. The same functionality garnished remarkably different results.
The book on Amazon currently has 3,634 reviews.
Copies can fail because the element copied is not that great to begin with. Other times, the design element copied may work well in the original site’s context, but may not be well suited for your site’s purposes. It must be well understood why you are implementing an element before blindly copying these elements and expecting similar success. What we may fail to realize in copying an admired feature or design is that these elements can be in various stages of evolution for the original brand’s site. They can be designed originally for a very specific solution that met the original brand’s needs. Without knowing the history of the evolution, a copy of this element may likely backfire.
The latest design to emulate is often Facebook. Their interface is constantly changing and evolving with their continual stream of feature enhancements. But at a closer look, Facebook itself is a copycat, bringing into its design elements from Twitter and Foursquare that are largely successful elsewhere. While this may work for large giants like Facebook, consider closely why copying could be a terrible solution for your brand’s online success.
With copying a design, you spend more time catching up and less time innovating design solutions. Innovation means pushing the boundaries that create a positive improvement for your users. By listening to the needs of your users, you can proactively create solutions that meet their needs instead of adding design features or functionality that are not appropriate. By understanding what your users actually need, you will begin to break down the barrier between your customers and your brand, which leads to building a trusted and positive relationship. However, copying elements blindly from other sources likely will create additional frustration for your users as these design features may not be what they need from your brand.
Just because others are doing it doesn’t mean your brand should embrace the same set of features or functionality solutions. Spend more time listening to your customers to understand their needs before you decide what best-practices elements are appropriate for their needs. Using common best-practices elements isn’t forbidden or un-creative necessarily; it just needs to have a well-thought-out need to provide a positive user experience.
Ultimately, doing simple user testing will help prove the results of your designs to ensure the elements you ultimately implement (copied or not) are successful to your target users. These results can be quickly mocked up in a wire frame or paper prototype for testing purposes and can provide you with valuable feedback. Additionally, for faster results you could even test the copied functionality on an existing website to determine how well this meets the needs of your users. Combined, this feedback can provide you with a valuable arsenal to refine your designs into successful results for your brand.
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I haven’t watched Major League Baseball in several years, but, as bandwagoners often do, I started to follow the Texas Rangers after their recent trip to the World Series. I’ve also noticed how on-screen graphics for sports presentations have evolved to display a vital set of information about the game in a very small area so that viewers aren’t distracted or overwhelmed with information. As an average fan of the game, I can get right up to speed after tuning in to a game already in progress.
In a very small “FOX Box,” as FOX Sports calls it, six crucial pieces of information can quickly get a viewer up to speed in a matter of seconds, with no extraneous information. While taking up a minute amount of space on the screen I can see:
- The teams playing – using three characters mirroring those found in newspaper box scores
- The current score
- The current inning (top and bottom)
- The number of runners on their respective bases
- The pitch count
- The number of outs
FOX Sports Southwest FOX Box graphic display during a Texas Rangers game
FOX uses this same box in their NFL presentations. Again, a small box in the upper left-hand corner displays:
- The teams playing, using team colors and logos only
- The current score
- The time remaining in the current quarter
- The down and distance
- The team in possession of the ball
- The number of timeouts remaining for each team
FOX NFL FOX Box graphic display during an Atlanta Falcons game
Providing context is also vital on the Web. One of the primary heuristics of user interface design is called “Visibility of System Status” – We need to ensure the user knows where they are within a process, taxonomy or time frame. Users don’t always enter a site from the home page, so the interface should provide some sort of context within the page where they have landed.
When moderating user testing for an interface, I like to have the participant turn away from the screen while I go to a random page. I’ll then ask them to look at the screen and tell me where they are on the site. Without visual cues, the user is completely lost. Without context, the site appears disjointed.
Some solutions: The global navigation elements need an “ON” state, enabled when any of the pages within its section are being viewed. Each page could also include breadcrumbs (text or text links that give users a way to keep track of their location within programs or documents). Dallasnews.com does a great job with both. They highlight the current section and subsection and provide a breadcrumb so that users can see where they are and easily navigate back to a primary section or page.
Dallasnews.com’s multilevel tabbed navigation and breadcrumb text
Amazon does a good job matching titles within the browser’s header, tab and URL.
Amazon.com URL
Even a simple “Back to Category XYZ” text link on a detail page within category XYZ will help users understand where they are.
While visibility of system status is only one of many heuristics we evaluate for each interface we build, it is probably the most important and simplest of concepts to implement. The next time you are on one of your favorite sites, try closing your eyes, clicking somewhere on the screen and then seeing if you can identify where you are in the site. It’s a fun way to test for system status visibility.
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User interface design is constantly evolving in the digital space. As users adapt to their various online environments, so must designers and developers consider the changing landscape. “The fold” is a concept derived from newspapers, which refers to the invisible line on a web page where the user must start scrolling to see the rest of the page’s content. So in traditional media, newspapers were often delivered or displayed folded up and the area “above the fold” is the first thing the reader would see. Therefore, the most eye-catching headlines and images get the readers’ attention and draw them further into the publication.
In the digital space, depending on your monitor size, browser window or the mobile device you’re using, the fold invariably will be different. The early years of Internet design were critical to designing with the fold in mind because users were not accustomed to scrolling inherently. Often, designs were limited to the area above this fold because of user limitations for scrolling the page. Now, with trivial screen resolution statistics and varied browser window sizes, scrolling behavior has become second nature to users – no longer something to be avoided.
Various folds by Internet user browser size
Source: FoldTester.com
While users have acclimated to scrolling online, several recent studies have shown that users spend 80% of their time looking at information above the fold. So it will still be well-advised to keep the most critical messages at the top of your designs. With the emergence of so many varied screen resolutions, there is no longer a well-defined height where the fold must be met. It’s not necessary to throw out the calculations of your target audience’s fold statistics, but it doesn’t mean that you should design the entire home page or pages within this confined space. Use the insight of your fold statistics to guide your critical content within this space, but allow for continued valuable and engaging content to entice users beyond their fold.
Source: WhiteHouse.gov, Hulu.com
Source: Starbucks.com, Southwest.com
Scrolling Beats Paging
Because of users’ limited attention span, long pages can be problematic for users. Users prefer site pages that get to the point and let them accomplish their objectives quickly. So while it is recommended to design beyond the fold, consider limiting unnecessary content and keep it to manageable pages so your user is not overwhelmed.
But if you do have a long article, it is best to present it on one long page. Usability studies have shown that scrolling beats pagination, because users are inherently lazy. They prefer to simply keep going down the page to read their article, not clicking to advance the page. But be mindful that your content must be prioritized and the key enticing content must be presented above the fold.
The Information Foraging theory says that people decide whether to continue along a path (in this case, scrolling) based on the information scent. In other words, users will only scroll the page if it’s relevant and valuable to them. The key is to make sure that the scent remains. A common way to break that scent is to stop giving them the options they are looking for.
The New Fold
With so many variables for your mythical fold, it can be a frustrating exercise in futility attempting to design for a pixel-perfect solution across so many screens and devices. While users can scroll your page beyond the fold, it is important to design and plan your users’ goal or your business goals above the fold. Users will inevitably scroll the page if the layout encourages scanning and if the initially viewable information makes them believe the page is worth their time to continue discovering. It is up to you as a designer to pay off your users’ gamble by providing them valuable content to engage them further with your brand.
So fear not the fold, for they will scroll. The goal is not to force everything above the fold, but to ensure your most important content that will grab the user’s attention is within the topmost pixels. And remember: allow your content to flow down the page as it’s much easier for users to scroll down the page than to click across multiple pages. Embrace the fold and break beyond the boundaries with engaging and relevant content for your audience.
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“Back in my day, son, we had to create all our wire frames in Visio! We had to link everything by hand if we wanted to create some kind of interactive version, or even hand-code them in static HTML…” – A 40-something information architect
Nowadays programs like Axure have made it incredibly easy to render small and medium-sized wire frame documents and interactive prototypes. While they can provide realistic, testable user experiences – there still are limitations, especially when creating a large catalog of pages or when the project has a quick turnaround time.
In Axure, the longer the list of pages, the longer the render time. One of our recent projects topped out at well over 100 pages. It took almost an hour to render a prototype. Even after all the work had been finalized and approved, the code Axure generated could not be reused by the development team. Developers still had to recreate the experience from scratch.
Recently, I was asked to create a set of wire frames and render a prototype for a client’s blog. There were numerous revisions to the documents, and development was left with a shortened timeline. For another client, I had to build an interactive prototype based on a 150+ page site map/content matrix. Axure was just too cumbersome.
So lately I have been experimenting with a new method of prototyping – building the prototype in the actual content management system (CMS) that my team’s developer will use to render the final version of the site.
For example, a client might use WordPress as the CMS for their blog/static page site. I simply created a default, grayscale template and built the prototype using a few additional plug-ins. Even if some pages will ultimately contain more robust toolsets, the page structures, template types, site map and naming conventions are already complete. Only the presentation layer, styles and additional features or custom scripting remain.
Above - Using the “Simple Add Pages” CMS plug-in creates an infinite amount of nested pages and corresponding navigation in one step.
I’ve found this method superior for making changes on the fly while collaborating with clients. Change page order, move pages to another section, rename entire areas – no problem. Different navigation systems can be tested on the fly and rapid iterative designs are much more, well, rapid. And again, all of the code, databases and XML data can be reused for the final version of the site.
The primary benefit – time savings for both information architecture and development. The 150+ page site that might take several weeks to create in Axure took a few days. Still, I would not recommend this solution for every project. Axure is far more nimble for prototyping more experiential sites, and the supporting specifications generator can be easily printed for client and development review.
While the CMS method of prototyping has yet to be fully vetted and tested, several of my colleagues in development are eager to collaborate with me on this type of prototyping. I’ll post updates in this blog with a client-approved example later this year.
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In the jungle of your brand’s digital experience, there is a vast opportunity to grow your brand and mature it to a strong silverback. But getting to the lead and maintaining status require an impactful and healthy user experience. While user testing research is critical to help drive the design of your brand’s presence, often time or budget constraints limit performance of the necessary steps.
Since research is often perceived as very expensive or very time-consuming, it is often left out of the project life cycle to meet deadlines and budgets. Without any research, there is no data to back up the design. This often forces designs to be driven by committees and subjective opinions instead of real user experience data. With research, we seek to create an artillery of valuable data to defend our designs with something more concrete and measurable based on target user experiences. It provides us insights into the consumer mindset to reveal what designs will be most successful.
Guerrilla Research
Fortunately, there are lower-cost options if it comes down to low-cost testing or no testing at all. Guerrilla research testing can be a fast and affordable alternative that can still provide valuable insights to apply to your strategic and tactical decisions. In some organizations, starting off with guerrilla testing can be a great way to introduce the value of research and provide widespread understanding and acceptance of these methods. A few posts ago, Jeff Jones wrote about the advantages of digital prototype testing, which can prove a powerful tool for rapid low-cost, high-return testing.
Oftentimes, you will get pushback from a client or stakeholder when research is initially brought up. Typically, underlying their rejection is more concern over the budgets or timelines. When presented with an alternative guerrilla-style usability testing method that integrates into the existing timeline with minimal impact, stakeholders become more receptive to usability testing. After all, it’s in their brand’s best interest to limit the traps and issues that will affect the success of the digital solution.
Keep in mind that guerrilla research is not a replacement for the big research, but it is better than no research at all. And often big research will not typically provide you the valuable data necessary to support the design implications. You owe it to your brand to incorporate at least some level of user testing into your project to demonstrate the value of testing to your stakeholders.
How Is Guerrilla Research Different?
Guerrilla research does not provide the same level of precise exactness in approach of traditional, formalized user testing. Guerrilla testing can provide you with enough results to determine if there are alternate solutions or opportunities to improve upon an issue in your design. Likewise, in guerrilla testing, the users you are recruiting may not fit the ideal persona for your brand, but are likely a generalized version of that persona that can generate valuable feedback.
Overall, it’s the difference of time, resources and effort that can play the biggest role in the success of guerrilla testing. This is what is most compelling in selecting what types of research you can accommodate on a project timeline. Formalized usability tests performed off-site in a lab, users’ homes or on location can take a significant amount of time and effort to arrange. Testing users in person can also be a challenge and take significant amounts of resource time and compensation fees.
Guerrilla testing doesn’t have to be limited to an in-house testing facility, but can also be performed online with remote users at their own computers. These services can provide basic recruiting based on a limited set of criteria and shave off significant amounts of time and money to get some quick feedback nationwide from users outside your in-house community. While there are also significant trade-offs with these remote testing systems, as they often are not conducted in real time by a moderator, they rely on the user taking self-guided webcam recordings of their experience. Absent from the findings may be the situational and environmental clues; however, the results can still reveal large issues within a design.
You Don’t Always Need King Kong
While costs of research make clients concerned about performing large-scale research, guerrilla testing can take the edge off those concerns so we can at least begin to introduce user testing to the mix. It can prove its value to the design, timeline and budget as well with impactful results.
Guerrilla testing is not a matter of doing something quick and dirty; rather, it’s just a lower cost approach to getting anecdotal feedback that can guide our designs with the knowledge against real-world concerns. The user’s feedback, not stakeholder opinions and speculation, can guide your brand’s design solutions.
So in the midst of your project life cycle, begin to include small amounts of time and budget toward developing small-scale guerrilla testing. It will serve to enhance your brand’s success in the digital jungle. Enlightened by valuable testing insights, soon enough your stakeholders will be going bananas for guerrilla testing.
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