In this course, evaluating designs with users, we will be diving into user testing. User testing is one of the key, if not the key methods in UX research, and knowing how to conduct a user test is absolutely essential for anyone working in UX, regardless of their role. So what is user testing? Well, basically what it means is, you're going to watch, representative users, that is, the types of people that you expect to use a system, try to accomplish important tasks, using that product. And so, that's pretty much all it is. You're going to just bring people in or you're going to go to where they are, and have them do a few things and you're just going to watch what happens. So, why do we do user testing? What do you get out of it? Well, in a nutshell, you learn a lot from watching people use a system. You learn what works and what doesn't, where do they run into trouble? Where does the system support what they are trying to do and where does it not? You also learn why things work and they don't. When you watch people struggle with a system, you can see what might be broken or what might be causing the problem that gives you some clues about what it is you need to fix. You also often learn about user needs that you missed, that maybe you didn't get right earlier in the process when you were trying to understand what users needs are. You put something in front of people and say, hey is this the thing that you needed? and they say, no, you know I forgot to tell you, I actually need it done this way. And so you can learn a lot that will help you design a better version of the product. Well, why not just use your own experience? Why not just try these things out yourself, and see where it works and where it doesn't work? Well, there's a couple of reasons why your own experience isn't necessarily going to be enough. For one thing, you often know too much, especially if this is a system that you're helping to build or a system that you've spent a lot of time with, you've already figured out how to do all the things you need to do. You may know the workarounds to get things done, that new people aren't going to necessarily be aware of it. So, it might be easier for you to use a system than it's going to be for other people. And you need to see how other people are approaching it. In some cases, you also might know too little. You don't really know enough about the users and what their expectations are and what their mental models are and how they think a task should work, until you see them try it out, until you see them go through the process of working through a task. So your own experience is valuable, your own intuition is valuable about what works and what doesn't. But it's often not enough, and that's why we do user testing to see how other people come out and interact with products, that we're interested in understanding. So, the basic idea behind user testing, is you're going to go and you're going to find potential users, people that are the types of people that you expect to use your system. You're going to ask them to do some stuff, and we're going to call those tasks. You're going to observe what happens. You're going to ask them some questions afterwards about their experience, and then you're going to write down what you learned, and figure out what that tells you about how the system ought to be improved. In the rest of this course, we will go deeper into each aspect of the user test. Looking at how to design, prepare for, conduct, and analyze user tests as part of UX research.
