Chapter 05 - Test - Design Thinking

26/10/22, 10:36 Chapter 05: Test – Design Thinking
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DESIGN THINKING
CONTENTS
Chapter 05: Test
In this chapter:
The test phase is important so that you can develop an authentic

understanding of how real people experience your offering — how
they understand it, how they feel about it, and what they would rec-
ommend to improve it.
Previous: Chapter 04: Prototype
Next: Conclusion
https://pressbooks.pub/innovationbydesign/chapter/test/ 1/13
User Testing
“If you spend time observing and talking with people who use your
product or service, fantastic creative ideas start to appear. None of this
happens in front of a whiteboard in the comfort of your office.” — Jake
Cook[1]
Jake Cook is describing the importance of empathic design, which depends

on feedback gained via user testing. The general rule when designing a new
or improved product, service, business model or experience is to test early and
test often.
That’s because as Dana Patton explains, “everything that we think we know

about our users are assumptions, and assumptions must always be
tested.”[2] Gathering early-stage feedback is helpful to inform the next phase of
design decisions you make as you iterate toward the final version. “Get out of
the office and go find your users,” Patton encourages, “Talk to them, listen to
them, observe them, and understand how they feel. You’ll be happy that you
did, and the work will be much better as a result.”
Next: Conclusion
For that reason, making user testing an ongoing activity is important, so that
you can develop an authentic understanding of how real people experience
your offering — how they understand it, how they feel about it, and what they
would recommend to improve it. By conducting quick and continuous assess-
ments, starting during the very first week of your project, you’ll increase the
likelihood that the innovation will lead to an increase in sales, conversions, web
traffic, and customer loyalties (referrals and retention). As David Peter Simon
advises, it’s good practice, once a week throughout your project, to test differ-
ent kinds of prototypes of various components of your solution with friends,
family, colleagues, target users, and any other random people who will volun-
teer to help.[3]
Recruiting Testers
User testing involves selecting representative users from a segment of the

population, and learning more about them, so that we can build better prod-
ucts and services for everyone, explains Dana Patton. Sounds good.
However depending on your timeframe or budget, and as part of the continu-

ous cycle of testing your ideas frequently with as many people as possible, you
may also find it useful to conduct some impromptu prototype testing with
people you know. This kind of convenience sampling is an effective prelimi-
nary idea validation technique and it requires minimal overhead. By running a
quick usability test with 3-5 people you’re acquainted with, and watching
them try to get their heads around and navigate your prototype, you can learn
a lot. Fast, easy, and inexpensive user research sessions involving people close
to you can produce valuable informal feedback on your design project-in-
progress.
Next: Conclusion
Recruiting Online
Recruiting testers online works wonders for design research. In order to suc-
cessfully recruit online testers who genuinely represent your future target
users, you will first need to decide who exactly you most need to speak to. To
this end, preparing user personas is helpful, as they will aid you to clearly de-
fine what kind of users you most need to understand, satisfy, and hear from.
One strategy to find relevant test users is to follow Amanda Stockwell’s advice
and invest a small amount of upfront time to create a go-to panel of research
participants for your design project. “Building a panel means you’ll always
have a list of people who have expressed interest in being part of research,”
Stockwell [4] When it comes time to run a test, you can just send them
writes.04:
Previous: Chapter Prototype
an email invitation.
Next: Conclusion
Another way to recruit testers is to leverage social media communications

channels. Select your platforms, post a brief intro to your study and a link to
your survey or test event invitation. To encourage social media users to com-
plete your survey, decide on a particular and very specific problem you want to
solve, and ask simple things, such as “Which word do you like better?” or
“Which icon do you like better?” Sarah Kahn suggests.[5]
Using social media for quick and simple prototype tests can deliver feedback
on your idea within minutes －Kahn calls this approach “a quick win.” The fact
is, Kahn reminds us, at many points in the innovation process quick, straight-
forward, brief, honest feedback is all that’s needed to move a design project
forward.
When deciding between social networking platforms, consider the demo-

graphics of users on each channel. Some will skew young, or female, or profes-
sional－ so you need to know who you are looking for before developing your
social recruiting strategy.
In-Person Testing
To get the most out of an in-person test session, here are some general things
to consider.
Clarify your goals.
What do you want to learn? Identify your questions, concerns, areas of interest,
and the purpose of the research.
Define the scope of the session.
Be very specific about exactly what you are testing. Rather than trying to test
everything at once, plan out which elements of the product or service each
round of testing will cover.
Previous:
Write your Chapter 04: Prototype
opening script.
Next: Conclusion
Gale Yang shares her opening script, which you may find helpful to modify for
your testing:
“You’ve been invited to help us understand which parts of the product

work for you and which are confusing. The [product/service] we’re test-
ing is [insert 1-sentence description here]. Even though we’re calling
this activity a test, you’re not being tested. The product is. There’s noth-
ing you can do wrong. It’s not your fault if you can’t get something to
work, and you won’t hurt anyone’s feelings if you say something bad
about the product. It’s really important that you speak all of your
[6]
thoughts aloud.”
Decide on your questions or tasks.
In usability testing, researchers ask users to complete activities (tasks) while

using the product, service, or interface. For example: when testing a reserva-
tion app for a restaurant, you might task the user with “booking for lunch to-
morrow at noon for a party of six.”
Here are some sample open-ended questions to get you thinking.

You might ask your test users:
What would you expect to be able to do with this

product/service?
If you could change one thing about this model, whether it is ma-
jor or minor, what would be at the top of the list?
Was there something missing you were expecting to see?
Who might want to use this service?
Consider logistics (location, date, duration).

When picking a location, look for a setting with low or no distractions. Spaces
Next: Conclusion
such as the shopping mall food court, or a library common area might be too
loud and hectic at certain times of the day. If at all possible, do your testing
where people live or work, so you can observe them engaging with your prod-
uct in their natural environment, advises Steven Hoober.[7]
Decide on how many sessions you will conduct on testing day and exactly how
long each will last. Remember that test participants may arrive late (especially
if you neglect to send a reminder notification with directions to the test loca-
tion) so leave a buffer between sessions.
Assemble equipment.
Do you need a computer or internet connection? Do you plan to do video

recording, and in that case do you need to think about lighting and a micro-
phone? If you’re doing the test in the user’s environment, be certain that your
prototype will work in the field. For example, for a physical model, it has to be
portable.
Decide on metrics.
What specifically are you measuring? What will a successful outcome look
like? Consider tracking completion rates, time on task, frequency of errors (crit-
ical and noncritical), total time spent confused－and subjective data such as
user satisfaction, likes, dislikes, perceived ease of use and perceived success.
Focus on active listening.
When planning in-person tests, it’s important to keep your questions simple
and straightforward, and listen more than you speak. Don’t share too much in-
formation about your offering, Steven Hoober cautions, but instead be patient
and let participants find their own way. You want to speak as little as possible
and let them do the talking. By listening three times more than you speak,
you’ll be less likely to resort to a confirmation bias－the tendency to hear and
focus only on the feedback that confirms what you already think about the
project.
Graciously receive
Previous: Chapter feedback.
04: Prototype
Prepare yourself to listen, and be willing to pivot or otherwise adapt in re-

Next: Conclusion
sponse to the feedback you hear. The trick is to get very good at listening to
your testers, try not to explain, to not get defensive or feel defeated if they
don’t “get it” and to instead let the people you’re designing for direct you to a
preferred solution. Sometimes you can’t predict what users will say or do. Have
the flexibility to change course if you receive new information or something
goes completely wrong during your test sessions. Remember, “the purpose of
user testing with prototypes is not to impress users, but to learn from them,”
advises Laura Busche.[8] She continues, ”instead of wowing people with our
product, the goal of testing with low-fidelity prototyping is to have users wow
us with their insight.”
Testing via Secondary Research
But what about doing user research when you can’t directly interact with real
people? “Ideally we’d always be doing our research in-person, in moderated
sessions running interviews and tests, until we’d gotten everything just right,”
admits Chris Myhill.[9]
Next: Conclusion
But sometimes you don’t have the budget or the timeline to run user live
tests, or conduct interviews — and in those cases there are other ways to
gather user insights, explains Jon Peterson.[10]
When you don’t have the option of first-hand contact with the people you’re
designing for, you might start by going online to find products or services sim-
ilar to yours, and look for the following:
Next: Conclusion
FAQ pages
Blog comments
App reviews
Forum discussions
Testimonials
Social media comments and questions
Amazon or Yelp reviews and ratings
This kind of online, secondary research is valuable and far better than not do-
ing any user research at all, Chris Myhill and Jon Peterson agree. So even if
your users are not directly accessible to you, do some investigations online to
learn all you can about them, what they expect from, and how they engage
with offerings similar to yours.
Suggested Deliverables for the Test

Stage:
You may want to visualize your research and design work using the
following tools:
Survey
User story
Interview podcast
Screencast
Final
Previous:Thoughts
Chapter 04: Prototype
Next: Conclusion
To sum up, in this chapter we’ve covered why user testing is a critical part of
the design thinking method. User testing is an exercise in empathic design.
Sometimes you can’t fully understand other people’s problems, pain points,
and perspectives until you put a prototyped solution in front of them and ob-
serve their honest responses.
When you build a model of what you think your solution should look and feel
like, and share it with others, you are learning by making, and you will likely
end up with suggestions for how to improve, simplify, or pivot your solution.
At the end of the day, to quote researchers at the Nielsen Norman Group: “a
product’s success depends on how users perceive it.”[11] This means it’s essen-
tial that design thinkers subject ideas and models to thorough and varied test-
ing, so we can better understand what users see, think, feel, and need to do, as
we strive to create innovations that they will want, need, and love to use.
Attributions: material from the following open source texts was adapted
and integrated into this chapter
“Design Thinking for Educators” IDEO. Circa 2013. CC BY-NC-SA

3.0 https://designthinkingforeducators.com/toolkit/
“Collective Action Toolkit” Frog Design. Circa 2016. CC-BY-NC-SA

4.0 https://www.frogdesign.com/wp-
content/uploads/2016/03/CAT_2.0_English.pdf
“Design Thinking for 11th Graders” Bridget McGraw. Circa 2016. CC BY-NC-SA
3.0 http://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/engineering-
andtechnology/design-and-innovation/design/design-thinking/content-sec-
tion-0
1.Previous:
Jake Cook.
Chapter"The Most Underrated Skill for Creatives? Empathy." nd.
04: Prototype
https://99u.adobe.com/articles/24713/the-most-underrated-skill-for-cre-
Next: Conclusion
atives-empathy ↵
2. Dana Patton. "The truth about talking to users" 2017.
https://medium.com/ontariodigital/the-truth-about-talking-to-users-
9621f0ff1aad ↵
3. David Peter Simon. "The Art of Guerrilla Usability Testing" 2017.
http://www.uxbooth.com/articles/the-art-of-guerrilla-usability-testing/ ↵
4. Amanda Stockwell. "How to recruit users for UX research in an agile sprint"
2016. https://uxmastery.com/recruits-users-ux-research-agile-sprint/ ↵
5. Sarah Kahn."Harnessing Social Media for Rapid Usability Testing" 2012.
https://webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/harnessing-social-media-for-rapid-
usability-testing--webdesign-8907 ↵
6. Gale Yang. "Micro-usability test on TrueCar.com: Identifying the barriers for
new buyers" 2017. https://medium.com/@galeyang/micro-usability-test-on-
truecar-bbf59502ea2f ↵
7. Steven Hoober. "Designing Mobile Interfaces: Patterns for Interaction
Design." O'Reilly Media. 2011 ↵
8. Laura Busche. "Skeptic’s Guide To Low-Fidelity Prototyping" 2014.
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/10/the-skeptics-guide-to-low-
fidelity-prototyping/ ↵
9. Chris Myhill. "User research when you can’t talk to users" 2018.
https://justuxdesign.com/blog/5-ideas-for-user-research-when-you-can-t-
talk-to-users ↵
10. Jon Peterson. "User Research When You Can’t Talk to Your Users" 2017.
https://alistapart.com/article/user-research-when-you-cant-talk-to-your-
users ↵
11. Nielsen Norman Group. "UX Without User Research Is Not UX" 2014.
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ux-without-user-research/ ↵
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Design Thinking by Sidneyeve Matrix is licensed under a Creative Commons

Next: Conclusion
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26/10/22, 10:36 Chapter 05: Test – Design Thinking

Home Read Sign in

Chapter 05: Test

The test phase is important so that you can develop an authentic

Jake Cook is describing the importance of empathic design, which depends

That’s because as Dana Patton explains, “everything that we think we know

User testing involves selecting representative users from a segment of the

However depending on your timeframe or budget, and as part of the continu-

Previous: Chapter 04: Prototype

Another way to recruit testers is to leverage social media communications

When deciding between social networking platforms, consider the demo-

Clarify your goals.

Define the scope of the session.

“You’ve been invited to help us understand which parts of the product

Decide on your questions or tasks.

In usability testing, researchers ask users to complete activities (tasks) while

Here are some sample open-ended questions to get you thinking.

What would you expect to be able to do with this

Consider logistics (location, date, duration).

Do you need a computer or internet connection? Do you plan to do video

Focus on active listening.

Prepare yourself to listen, and be willing to pivot or otherwise adapt in re-

Testing via Secondary Research

Previous: Chapter 04: Prototype

Suggested Deliverables for the Test

“Design Thinking for Educators” IDEO. Circa 2013. CC BY-NC-SA

“Collective Action Toolkit” Frog Design. Circa 2016. CC-BY-NC-SA

Previous: Chapter 04: Prototype

Design Thinking by Sidneyeve Matrix is licensed under a Creative Commons

Guides and Tutorials | Pressbooks Directory | Contact

Previous: Chapter 04: Prototype

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