Great products and services aren’t static: they evolve over time and adapt to the people using them. The best way to create amazing products and services that deliver increasing organizational value is to research market perception and validate the quality of the user experience. This knowledge enables human-centered design processes that meet user needs and enable exceptional outcomes.
As Toronto’s premier digital management consultancy, Say Yeah brings the right mix of user testing facilitators, product strategists, and interaction designers to balance best practices with stakeholder and organizational needs. This includes identifying the most effective user testing methodologies, such as user interviews, focus groups, user workshops, usability testing, and behavioural analytics.
A reminder: you’re not testing the user; you’re testing a hypothesis
One of the challenges with terms like ‘user testing’ is overcoming the literal term. In fact, you’re not ever testing the user; you’re testing their experience with the product, service, or concept you put before them. The user is, in fact, conducting the test.
This is an important distinction because it’s the user themself who is providing the insight into how to shape the product or service. They are providing valuable market intelligence that will help ensure your product and service success.
Between us, it’s fine to use a term like ‘user testing’, but when you’re asking people to test your product or service, you need to use language that puts them in control and doesn’t imply they’re the subject of the test.
Through our combined user testing and product expertise alongside your domain and product knowledge, we’re able to work through a user testing process that provides the rigour and analysis to make decisions that bring bottom-line value. Our post-test analysis and recommendations will provide the insight you need to improve user engagement and action across all types of products—including desktops, tablets, smartphones, and other hardware and IoT devices—as well as opportunities to improve service touchpoints at all stages of the customer journey.
User testing success story: Kanetix
- Sticking points in the customer acquisition flow, from an initial form requirement through to customer service interactions that supported a purchase decision;
- Service delivery inefficiencies caused by a lack of internal communication and collaboration;
- Ways to improve both the online customer funnel and call centre experience.
For Kanetix, an unexpected user requirement that was necessitated by external business requirements led to the possibility of limiting conversions which were responsible for generating signficant revenue.
We leveraged user testing to uncover customer sentiment and possible customer journey gaps and obstacles
We identified
Our user testing service mix
Strategy
- Understand the goals of the product to define objectives and key results (OKRs) and key performance indicators (KPIs)
- Understand market needs to highlight how we can best deliver value to users
- Define areas of focus for ongoing test and measurement, prioritizing transactional flows, information design, and other areas of impact
- Consider the right tools, resources, and tactics to draw out user insight and validate hypotheses at each level of the product and service lifecycle, from planning, to design, to ongoing operation.
Design
- Design a test and measurement framework, prioritizing bottom line impact
- Planning user tests framed around drawing out new insights from actual and potential product and service users
- Develop individual test plans for remote or in-person user tests
- Choosing the right test methodology based on the stage of product and service development, from card sorting to first click tests, surveys to in-person testing
Deployment
- Setting up analytics and behavioural tracking to gather insightful data into how your product or service is being used
- Leading usability tests of a user interface, design, layout, or information architecture
- Capturing video footage and evaluating captured data to present actionable findings to your organization
- Setting up tools and processes within the organization for ongoing testing
Validation
- Getting direct feedback from actual users that are interested in your product or service
- Validating product journey map or service blueprint which highlight how a user flows throughout a digital product or engages with a service
- Examining how users interact across different channels and platforms and how it alters user experience
- Ongoing testing to ensure changes have improved the customer experience and to identify next steps priorities