Woolik.com develops cool tools for browsers that personalize and improve the user experience. The first tool available helps saves time while searching by providing logos of familiar sites and brands within the Google search results. Ido Sever — Woolik’s co-founder, CEO and product manager — has been incorporating TryMyUI as part of Woolik’s R&D cycle. Woolik just released a beta version of its Web 2.0 site, so we asked Ido to share some tips and insights from that pre-launch experience.
Remote usability testing versus moderated user testing
“We had several user tests before using TryMyUI, but organizing them was always a hassle. It was hard to combine user tests within our R&D cycle. TryMyUI enabled me to get relevant user experience tests of designated segments within hours – this was VERY convenient. We had some relatively complicated prerequisites for some of our tests, and the guys at TryMyUI support team were incredibly useful, so we kept coming back.”
Tips on Setting Up User Tests in TryMyUI
“If you want to see how a user thinks, it is always better to ask a question rather than providing an answer. Let’s say you have integrated a feedback system [on your website] and would like to see if users can easily use it. If you request the user to simply provide feedback you might receive many results which won’t help you. On the other hand, if you ask – ‘how would you provide feedback for our site?’ you will probably see the user going through the same thinking process he would go through in a real situation.”
“If possible, start building a new test based on an existing test [you already created] in TryMyUI. This is a great time saver.”
How to Involve R&D Teams in User Testing
“A key challenge is turning a test into real features with the blessing and enthusiasm of the R&D team. Therefore, we usually show 1-2 tests (selected out of 5) every product cycle to our R&D team. We then have a brainstorming session about the things we should change and fix. We usually choose the top 1-2 features and toss them in the R&D coming iteration. This is a great effective way to have your R&D team involved.”
“video indexing”. It allows you to quickly click and set the video to the start of each task, kind of like the index you find in DVD’s. The way it works is that we mark the time when the tester clicks on “next task”, then use that to position the video. Videos that have this task timing are presented with a new “video index” tab, where each task has a “play” marker that allows you to go to its position in the video. In addition, we show the task’s duration. This should help you both get a quantitative view on how longs tasks take, and also quickly go to a task of interest.
How to Talk to Your Users
We met Diane Loviglio, a user experience researcher at Mozilla, at a recent SF Bay Area meetup, and she shared some insights on the traditional Recruit-Observe-Interview-Navigate user testing process.
1. Recruit your target audience. Diane suggests not talking to just anyone or everyone. Instead, recruit people based on “behaviors” or “personas” versus standard demographics. For example, if you target “homeowners” versus “married couples in their 30s”, you’re likely to gain more insights from the former group than the latter if what you wanted to learn was related to finding a home loan. Young married couples may or may not have gone through the mortgage process yet.
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