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Would you like to research the usability (UX) of your site or app, but don’t know which method to choose? A good chunk of entrepreneurs and other people responsible for a digital product’s success are in a similar situation. I’ll tell you which usability research methods are worth considering and what specific information each of them will provide you with.
Why research the usability of sites and apps?
Imagine a situation where, at the outset, you described your target group. You defined its requirements according to your hunches and even studied the competition. You were sure everything was buttoned up to the last detail. You refined every CTA button down to the smallest part. You introduced all the changes a UX specialist recommended in an expert audit. You launch your digital product and wait eagerly for the first results. You wait, you keep waiting and … Not much happens.
The traffic is quite decent, only the bounce rate is somewhat high and the conversion rate is decidedly lower than you expected. Why did that happen? On the path from plan to releasing a finished product, an important stage was missing - testing.
Fortunately, you’re interested in this stage, so you’ll most likely avoid this disappointment. Usability research methods are one of the elements that make digital products ultimately turn out to be a success rather than a flop, because their creators chose to hear the voice of the people the product is meant to serve every day. Thanks to this they saved budget they would have had to spend implementing flawed solutions. They also raised their chances of delighting users and keeping them around longer. You want that too, right?
What does usability research involve?
Usability research (UX) is a way to get to know users, their requirements, experiences and observations. This knowledge can be used to create and develop functional digital products (websites, services, online stores, web and mobile apps) that meet the goals you set for them.
In short, the usability research process covers 5 stages:
- Identifying the goal - what exactly do you need to know at this stage of design?
- Formulating a hypothesis - what do you think you know on this topic; what, in your opinion, is the answer to the questions posed in point 1?
- Choosing a usability research method - which method will let you answer the questions?
- Conducting the research with users.
- Interpreting the results - what do the quantitative/qualitative data you obtained tell you?
You can read more on this topic in the article: Who is a UX tester and how can they help your business?
Effective usability research methods
Creating great digital products involves not only specialists but also users
Time to find out which usability research methods are able to provide you with the data you need. I’ll focus on the 10 best types of UX research, in my experience.
Usability tests (including accessibility tests)
These are the most commonly used usability research methods - the king of UX tests. Usability tests involve users performing specific tasks on a site, in an app, an online store or a service. Such a task could be finding a product or piece of information, placing an order, getting in touch with the company, and much more.
The researcher observes how the person copes, how much effort it costs them and which paths they take. On this basis they determine audiences’ needs, problems with the product’s functionality and opportunities to increase the project’s effectiveness.
You also have to remember that if you’re a public entity, the law requires you to adapt the site and app to the needs of people with disabilities (including those with visual and hearing impairments).
Prototyping
You’ll use a prototype at the design stage and when selecting specific features. Even before you implement them, you can send a prototype to potential customers and check whether this form of the product is already good enough and adapted to their requirements to allocate the budget for its launch.
Iterative research
Do you dream of usability research methods that, right in the testing phase, check whether the changes to the design/product work? If so, you’ll like iterations. They assume testing and resolving discovered problems on the fly.
The researcher runs the first round of tests. On their basis, changes are made, and in the second round an already improved version is studied. How many iterations (rounds of testing) need to be carried out to refine the product? It depends. I know that’s not the answer you were hoping for, but it all depends on how complicated your project is. Usually 3 rounds are enough.
A/B tests
These will let you choose the better version of a design, a feature or any other element of your digital product. Through them you’ll compare the effectiveness and fit of both proposals to users’ requirements.
It’s best to present audiences with 2 versions that differ in only one element, e.g. the colour or the text of a button. Otherwise it will be hard to determine which specific link decided that a given proposal turned out to be better.
Card sorting
The users’ task is to group cards into categories. Specific topics are placed on the cards. This way you can learn the logic guiding your audiences. It will make it easier for you to plan the information hierarchy.
If an internet user doesn’t know where to look for specific data, they’ll find it somewhere else, e.g. at a competitor.
Tree testing
Tree testing belongs to the usability research method that is card sorting. In this version you’ll check whether the information layout and navigation you’ve planned really are intuitive for users.
The participant is given the task of finding a specific piece of information, or of stating which of the presented categories they would look for it in.
The 5-second test
It isn’t strictly a usability research method, but it can give you a sense of the first impressions your product evokes in users. The researcher sends them a screenshot of a given screen, which they’re to look at for the eponymous 5 seconds. After that time, the researcher asks questions, e.g. “Which element of the page did you like most?”, “Who do you think this product was created for?”, “What do you think this brand does?”.
How is a 5-second test meant to help you develop the site? In truth, it’s precisely those first seconds that are decisive for the decision of whether to enter into any interaction with the site or leave it. In this context, 5 seconds has power!
Session recording
This method lets you discover how a user behaves on the site under natural conditions. They’re not given any task to perform and, unless they read the privacy policy, are often not even aware that their session is being recorded (anonymously).
By recording the session you’ll see, among other things, mouse movements, clicks and scrolling. You’ll discover where the user gets lost, where they spend the most time and where they decide to end their interaction with the product.
The only drawback of this method is the fact that reviewing the recordings takes a lot of time, and interpreting them requires knowledge. That doesn’t change the fact that you can extract a great deal of information from it.
Heatmaps
Heatmaps connect directly with the session recording method. With colour, they show users’ journey around the digital product. They illustrate the level of their interaction with individual elements of the site or app.
Through them you’ll see which places are visited most eagerly and which are completely skipped. You’ll find out what is most interesting for the audience and what’s worth refining.
This is roughly what a heatmap looks like
In-depth interviews with users
Interviews take place 1-on-1. They’re conversations moderated by a UX researcher, who first creates a general plan and the matters they should ask the user about in order to verify the hypothesis posed at the start.
An in-depth interview is more than an ordinary survey. There are no predetermined, rigid questions. The UX tester follows the interviewee, develops the threads they raise, and asks open questions. In truth, every interview can begin with the same question, but the one that ends it already depends on the interviewee.
Sounds simple, right? An ordinary conversation lasting 1–1.5 hours. Well, that’s not quite the case. The researcher keeps the whole interview within a defined frame. The entire time they strive to make it provide them with concrete information. Interpreting the results also demands a lot of effort from them - spotting recurring patterns and drawing conclusions. In return, the results themselves are often very surprising.
Usability analysis in your company
All right, but how are you to know which usability research methods will be best specifically for your company? They all have a lot of very important data to offer, but I realise you’re limited, to a greater or lesser extent, by such mundane matters as a lack of time, insufficient resources, or a budget that forces you to focus only on the most important methods.
Fortunately, you don’t have to choose at random. When deciding what to invest in, answer a few questions for yourself.
- What design stage is your digital product currently at?
If you’re only planning, think about in-depth interviews and card sorting. While testing specific solutions, A/B tests, prototyping, iterative research and the 5-second test can help. After launch, think about session recording, usability tests and heatmaps. Of course this is a fairly simplified split, and other methods can be useful to you at individual stages too. I only mean to present the possibilities you have. 2. What exactly do you want to learn about your product’s usability?
Do you want to test the design in search of possible flaws? Do you care about solving a usability problem whose existence you already know about? Do you want to develop your product, add new features? 3. What kind of data do you need to answer the questions posed?
Do you want to study how users using your product behave (quantitative data), or are you more interested in why they do it (qualitative data)? Or maybe you’re most interested in their first impressions (the 5-second test)? 4. Which method will let you achieve more than one goal?
For example, in-depth interviews are able to provide you with a lot of information about the site that you had no idea about before. It’s worth choosing specific usability research methods bearing in mind how many questions and hypotheses they’re able to verify for you at once. 5. Does your target group know what exactly they might be missing in your product?
If so, in-depth interviews are able to provide you with valuable data. If not, a moderator can steer the conversation to uncover important matters, but usability tests, or session mapping and recording, will be decidedly more cost-effective for you.
If you need more detailed information or support with UX testing, take a look at our offer for usability research. We help create projects based on evidence - not guesses.
Senior UX/UI designer at the UX agency Wzór. She designs interfaces for web, mobile and e-commerce applications - from requirements analysis, wireframes and prototypes to final UI consistent with the design system.
