testing mobile apps

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HOW TO USER TEST YOUR APP September 9, 2012 Warsaw, Poland

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Presentation given by user experience Designer Jennifer Morrow in Warsaw, Poland September 9, 2012

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: Testing Mobile Apps

HOW TO USER TEST YOUR APPSeptember 9, 2012

Warsaw, Poland

Page 2: Testing Mobile Apps

cześć!

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I was going to do all my slides in orange...

...but it’s day two...

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Aah. Hangover friendly.

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My Name is Boriss I’m on the Mozilla User Experience Team

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Our focus is on how Mozilla’s products and services are perceived, learned, and used

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tl;dr: User experience is a back and forth process between:

1. The needs of users

2. Innovation based on those needs

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If only the users’ current needs are considered... !

“We ask users what they want and we’ll build that.”

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Ask users what they want and then build it? Cool, let’s do that!

except....

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This only addresses current problems, so your solutions will be limited to current problems

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Users are experts in what bothers them, but not why it bothers them nor what the solution is !

!

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“If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said a faster horse.” ! - attributed to Henry Ford, but who knows

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Can lead to just “averaging” needs: building to fix individual problems rather than with an overall vision of the product !

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“What’s your favorite color?”

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Grey

“What’s your favorite color?”

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Ok, so how do we build apps around real user needs?

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First, know your users.

• What are they trying to accomplish? !

• What are their metrics of success? Productivity, creativity, accomplishment, better communication, fun? !

• Oh, and... who are they?

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How can we discover the needs of app users? !

• User testing, with participants selected for matches with your demographic and enough people to be statistically significant !

• Focus groups, with participants recruited via agencies and pair for their time !

• Eye tracking studies !

• Journal studies !

• Contextual interviews

...unless you’re

broke and in a

hurry

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Here’s some quick and dirty user experience tips for your app

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A common problem app developers face is unknowingly designing for:

• Their features and capabilities

• Themselves

• Everyone

• Their mom

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To avoid falling in this trap, create a persona! !

• Personas are fictional, archetypal users that represent the needs of larger groups of users !

• They act as ‘stand-ins’ for real users and help guide decisions about functionality and design !

• They have specific attributes as people and needs as users. They should be “real” enough to talk about and design for

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Personas are useful for: !

• Giving the team a shared point of reference for design (much better than everyone’s mom) !

• Tying the usage and design of the product to real human needs, not just features !

• Focusing the scope of design on particular kinds of users, rather than “all users”

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Let’s make one!

• Name? • Age? • Occupation? • Familiarity with similar products?

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Once you have a design or prototype, how can you get useful UX feedback on it?

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“Think-aloud” tests: Easy, cheap, and super effective!

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Think-aloud test tl;dr: !

1. Find a user not familiar with your product who (hopefully) is similar to your target users !

2. Give the user a task or two to do. Instruct the user to “think out loud,” remind them to do this when they stop (they will) !

3. Don’t say anything: record or take notes !

4. Rinse and repeat with different users !

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Think-aloud tips: !

• Take some demographic information down at the beginning. How familiar is the user with the product, etc? !

• Assure the user at the beginning that you are “testing the software, not them.” !

• The rougher the prototype looks, the more honest feedback will be !

• At the end of the test, ask the user for any clarifications you need on what they did during the test !

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Let’s try it!

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What if I just need a question or two answered but don’t have the money for an agency?

!

Turk it!

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Amazon Mechanical Turk pros: !

• Cheap

• Fast

• No recruiting

• Participants are actually thorough and take time on

• studies

• If you need a specific demographic you can target it

• Anonymous, so less lab-watched effects

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Amazon Mechanical Turk cons: !

• Some markets are harder to reach: India and the United States still the vast majority of workers, all have access to computer and internet !

• Limits on how interactive your test can be !

• Money is the motivation for your users - they want to finish your test and move into another, and are in this mindset.

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Let’s turk something!

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Questions?