![]() It’s always been worth it, and I’m always surprised by the things I got wrong. That first testing experience had such an impact on me as a designer, I now test every single design. The results were impressive-even a novice user was able to use a fairly complex application. The next day, I replaced my polished prototype with quick interactive wireframes that represented a new and improved design concept based on insights I gained from the previous day’s user testing. At the end of it all, I was forced to accept the fact that perhaps I wasn’t as good a designer as I thought I was. That day, I went through five testing sessions. ![]() The first person I tested became confused after the second step-and in one stroke, my illusions were destroyed. Like so many other designers, I had become infatuated with my own creation. I wanted to make it perfect and I was naively, unabashedly sure it would work. For two months, I worked hard fine-tuning a prototype for a web application. I’ll never forget my first user testing experience. There’s an old adage in the UX community: “You are not the user.” We’ll go through the reasons for usability testing and the six basic and essential steps to successfully conduct a test. Unfortunately, not enough design/product teams do it. User testing is like watching over someone’s shoulder while they interact with your app or site, except that you get to ask questions along the way and nudge them in the direction you want to explore. I want to make sure the design works well, and that all assumptions and hypotheses are validated-testing with users has become one of the most important steps of my design process. It’s an excellent way to gain valuable insights into what works and what doesn’t. It’s about solving a problem effectively something that can only be accomplished by repeated testing and with many iterations on the design. It’s not just about stunning visuals (the surface). User testing-which is part of a user-centered design philosophy-is one of the most important aspects of a designer’s job. Once you deeply understand user concerns and usability issues, you become better at correcting them. It’s about the critically important process of testing your designs with real users in real scenarios. User testing is known by many names: product testing, design testing, usability testing, design validation, etc.
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