5 Usability Testing tips

How to Effectively Conduct Over-the-Shoulder Testing

Usability testing is an effective way to evaluate problem areas of your product by testing it with real users. As a follow up to my 5 Do’s and Don’ts of Consumer Surveys, here are some tips for conducting over-the-shoulder testing.

Photo by Daoudi Aissa on Unsplash

Key Points:

1. Usability testing can help you to identify the content and functionality the market is missing, evaluate how intuitive a product is and resolve issues, and compare features to find out which one users will like best. This will help you build products customers want, need, and will use again and again.
2. Be very liberal with testing. Test everything all the time — it could be as simple as a piece of content in a user flow or after deploying a big sprint.
3. Start by watching the participant complete a task then ask broad questions before narrowing in on specific issues.
4. Use heat mapping tools to start documenting where people are looking and what they are clicking on first.
5. Tape the sessions with a tripod to look back at with your team and take notes.