Before testing

1. Set some goals and objectives. Determine the goals of the user test by looking at the set of features you want feedback around. Create prompts or tasks around those.
2. A script. This will help you to be prepared and make sure everyone is hearing the same thing and it will have instructions for the user to complete certain tasks. Here it is important to think about your objective of the test and how you word it to the participant. Sometimes it’s not good to be so obvious. Example: You want to see if the navigation is noticeable and intuitive. The task should not be: “Look at the navigation and tell me if it is intuitive.”, rather, “You want to buy some shorts for your nephew, how would you do that through this site?”
3. Participant selection. Select about 5-7 participants who most closely fit your target demographic. Worried about the small size? Usability experts have stated that this number will catch about 80% of the problems.

During testing

1. Be objective.This is as difficult as you have spent so much time on your product.You are testing the interface not the user, so there is no wrong answer. This means you should try not to lead the user or offer help to complete tasks. Oftentimes it is tempting to answer their questions, but a good response is to ask them, “What do you think it should it do?”.
2. Think aloud. You want to hear their thoughts and their impressions. This is a bit of an unnatural thing to do in front of the computer, so you may have to gently remind them. One question I like to continually ask is: “What are you thinking right now?” This is a good question to ask if you see them taking a long time to do something or looks like they are searching for something.
3. Actions speak louder than words. Have them “show” you how they “normally” do things - (We’ve found that what they say is not always how they do things)
4. Document. Take as many notes as possible and look for patterns
5. Bonus Tip: After each session, I like writing 3-4 key learnings/findings from each session, so at the end of the day the design team can look for patterns easily.

After testing

1. Analyze. When looking at all the data, I like to make sure to keep it to focusing on patterns. If you are keeping a whiteboard list, this can be helpful in cutting right to the patterns.
2. Debrief, debrief, debrief. It’s very good to talk with the rest of the team about what you have learned to corroborate findings and make sure you haven’t caught anything.
3. Action Items. Create 3-5 recommendations that are actionable.
4. Communicate. Talk to all the stakeholders involved so that you can make sure these changes get into the product.

Now you are well on your way to becoming a usability expert!!

This is part of the User Testing for Startup Series. You can find Part 1 here: Ways to do user testing on the cheap.

Here are the reasons why:

YOU are not every user.
In user experience design, I see people make this mistake all the time. Religious wars break out over what makes sense to different people - drop downs or radio buttons. This just shows me that not every user is the same, and perhaps YOU as the creator is not every user.

It’s TOO Personal
I’ve often met people who have made great decisions in their professional career, but horrible decisions in their personal career. There is a certain level of emotion and attachment that happens in our personal lives that at times does not allow us to see clearly. I don’t think that’s wrong when it comes to personal matters, but when building a startup product for people, it’s a good idea to relinquish as much personal attachment to how you’ve executed as much as possible. This will enable you to approach decisions in a more logical manner and get up easier when you are knocked down.

I know what I’m doing!
The key to building a successful product is to be “open”. Building for a different demographic can be helpful for that. Oftentimes if you claim you are the target demographic, you may feel a need to make sure all the product decisions made are ones you would use (see #1) or else, god forbid you may not be a “part” of that demographic. However, once you know you are not in the target demographic, your decisions are not as much based on who you are, but rather how well you can listen and interpret what is going on. You become more of an ethnographer.

Being on the outside can be one of the most insightful perspectives of all!

You can post an ad on Craigslist offering people a $50 Amazon Gift Card for about 1-2 hours of their time. You can have them come in or do it over the phone. In person is nice to see their facial expressions but can lead to an artificial environment. Doing it over the phone creates a remote user testing situation (see below).

2. Family and Friends Night

This is a fun way to get the entire company involved. You order pizza/beer and invite a bunch of family and friends. Get your friends to do several tasks and have developers or anyone else in the company on hand to moderate and take notes of folks. While this is very light it can offer some feedback and get other stakeholders very involved. Oftentimes after these sessions non-designers become champions for good design as they have seen how their participants have struggled.

3. Starbucks Stranger Testing

If you have moxie and are in the Silicon Valley, it’s not too strange to go up to a stranger in Starbucks to get their quick feedback in exchange for a coffee drink. This is not scientific but it will get you some unbiased perspectives while also watching them use your product in a non-lab environment.

4. Remote User Testing

This is very good if you have a mature product with some traffic. Even if you have mocks it will work “okay”. The great thing about this is you can see what type of environment the user is using your product or will be using your product. You will get to see how often they get interrupted and how their desktop is set up. I was amazed to hear how often participants with babies would be interrupted, how cluttered people’s desktop was, and their general workflow to take down notes, copy links, navigation, etc…

Digg our press coverage here!

http://digg.com/television/TVLoop_The_best_place_for_TV_Shows_Trivia_Episodes
http://digg.com/tech_news/TVLoop_com_Where_TV_Meets_Social_Networking
http://digg.com/tech_news/Watercooler_launches_TVloop_com

Hope we make it to the finals! Vote for us!

What is with these useless apps? Many people don’t get them, yet they are wildly popular.

I’ve heard this question a lot about these apps come mainly from adults and pundits of the social media space. However, the latest graphs from flowing data suggests that these applications by far are the most popular.

1. Pandering to the Masses.
One explanation is pandering to the masses. We may not understand the popularity of people reality TV, and we dismiss it as pandering to the masses. It’s what sells and what people like.

2. Generational differences.
It’s the classic case of “parents just don’t understand”. While the older population on Facebook continues to grow, it is still more populated by high school and college students. These silly apps are really for those kids and not adults. In fact, it’s the adults that are really asking these questions.

3. Facebook is a place for friends
The number one reason why I hear how people use Facebook, it is to “keep in touch with friends”. If people are coming to “hang out” and talk with their friends, the silly apps offer a way for them to casually hang out with one another. In the offline world, people rarely get together with their friends to execute a search, schedule a meeting, “network”, or sit around and get recommendations. While those things do occur when hanging out with friends, it is usually a secondary reason as to why you are hanging out with your friends.

4. Inherent Viral Co-efficient is Low for Utility Apps
A very well-written reason is that the inherent viral co-efficient for utility apps are just not as good as these “useless” or “silly apps”. Utility apps are rarely viral, particularly when layered on a platform. These apps all become very advanced for achieving some simple goals, as the platform is itself a communication utility tool.

5. Silly Apps Offer More than a Binary Interaction with Friends
We all get friend requests that are very binary: “Are you my friend or not” . In the offline world, our interactions with one another are less binary and more casual. There are tiny nuances such as body language and tone of voice that allow for more casual or double meaning of things. “Poking” was the first casual form that allowed people to interact outside of the binary,rigidness of “friending”. Poking is full of double meaning and is a way to interact, but not really. It has perfected the art of “passive aggression” online. The silly apps mimic the casual interaction that is present in human analog interaction.

I think that useless apps are here to stay, and if you take a closer look they aren’t all that useless when they are allowing more nuanced interaction than the common digital binary interaction rudimentary in online social networks.

Today I bought “The Big Cheese” where you have 5 chances to match up the number under the “Big Cheese”. As I scratched away holding my breath at each scratch, I pulled up a loser on all 5 chances. One one of them I thought , if this digit was a “6″ I could have won $500. Then I realized that the Lotto had not stripped me from my dignity by leaving me with a glimmer of hope that I “could have been a winner”.

The amusing thing is I fall for it every time. Lotto knows that that number is not the winning number, yet they choose to print the amount I’d win on it. They could save some ink, but I’m sure their returns on people buying another ticket because they felt “close” to winning some money is more than worth the extra ink.

Well back to designing experiences that leave people with hopes and dreams of how they *could be* a winner….

1. Human beings are evolutionary, not revolutionary
I always thought to be truly innovative I needed to do something that fundamentally shifted the way a product was seen or used. Oftentimes when I try to be innovative, the adoption of it is quite low. I’ve come to realize that it’s because humans are evolutionary, and I’m trying to create revolutionary designs. Innovation happens with iteration and the tiny tweaks done in the product. Something small can really make the product innovative.

2. It’s not just a product, it’s a culture
In the midst of trying to create a product that sticks , a culture is being created within your organization. The decisions you decide within product affect the vision, approach, and way of thinking that is carried through the way people interact with each other at the startup.

3. Hire slowly, fire quickly
Since it takes a lot of time and resources hiring and finding the right person, once you find out it’s not a good fit you should quickly get rid of them. The longer you take to get rid of them, the more you eat away at finding the right person. Also, if the person has an abrasive/bitter attitude, it can spread quickly to the rest of the team. One of the highest priorities should be protecting your team. Without your team, your organization and product are nothing.

4. Do the things that only you can do, and outsource the rest
I’m guilty of wanting to do everything and feeling terrible asking people to do things. However, there are just so many things call for your attention that you really can’t spend your time wasting it on things that can easily be outsourced. While you can never see any task as beneath you, you are on the team for a certain skillset that no one on that team has. Make sure you are doing the thing you were brought on to do first and give up the rest.

5. Assign roles to people, but empower them not to stay in them
When we first started we didn’t have a product manager even though a lot of us had strong feelings about product. It was hard for us to come to decisions because while we all had opinions about the product, but there wasn’t one person responsible for the direction and vision of it. Once we hired a product manager, everyone recognized that he was the person to hold the direction and vision. Things ran more efficiently as he fit right into this role.

However, since the startup is small and aims to mature, that person will need to take a leadership role and grow out of the initial role he/she was hired to do. This means that roles need to be rigid enough so that flawless execution can happen, but loose enough so that the person can develop a visionary mindset.

Photo Credit: Terry Chay

It was nice and intimate and we were able to take them around and show them the office. I was most excited to show them the UX Cafe where we post designs and everyone can look and comment on them. I told some of my designer friends to take down anything “confidential”. When we got to the area, everything was taken down and all the boards were flipped hahaha I guess everything was confidential.

Today, designs may still be confidential but AOL is showing more signs of embracing the Silicon Valley Tech “Web 2.0″ community. The VP at AOL Silicon Valley, William Morris, welcomed folks. They had great schwag … giving away a Timbuktu bag! Check out the video below.

Click To Play

Disclaimer: I used to be an employee at AOL Silicon Valley

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“If you’re a frequent Twitter user, a journalist writing a wire service (AFP) article on Twitter would like to talk to you. If you’re interested, contact Kara Andrade at kara[dot]andrade[at]yahoo[dot]com”

After more research, she is interested in the following:

The two main questions I’m interested in asking frequent Twitter users is:

(1) Why do you Twitter?
(2) What are some common misconceptions about people that Twitter and who is interested in what Twits (?) have to say?

I’m definitely interested in following one person’s story throughout the day as they Twitter.

Contact Kara if you feel like you fit the bill: Kara Andrade at kara[dot]andrade[at]yahoo[dot]com

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