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Conducting research with usability studies

Usability studies

A usability study is a research method that assesses how easy it is for participants to complete core tasks in a design.

During a usability study, researchers follow participants as they interact with the product.

The user's feedback helps the design team make important improvements to the user experience.

Usability studies can take place at various points in the design process.

You can conduct a usability study when you have an early idea, like a lo-fi prototype that is only somewhat interactive. Often this is called concept testing.

You can also conduct a usability study when you have an interactive prototype.

This is the most common time to conduct the study because it gives the design team insight on what needs to be revised or added before the product launches.

You can even conduct the usability study with a product that is complete.

You may want to change a feature of the product or test if the product is usable with a specific group of people.

You've created a prototype of the website that includes this new feature to place an online order, you decide to conduct a usability study to understand how easy it is for users to complete an order.

As part of the study, participants navigate the prototype from the landing page to check out,

acting as if they're real customers. As a researcher, you collect feedback as you watch the users interact with the prototype.

In some usability studies, you can even interview participants after they're done interacting with the prototype in order to get more feedback.

Conduct moderated and unmoderated usability studies

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Moderated usability studies have a person, known as a moderator, guide participants through the study in real time. Because a person facilitates the session, moderated usability studies allow for rapport building between the moderator and participant, which can help the participant open up and share more feedback about the design. Moderated studies work best when you want to dig into the details because you can ask follow-up questions throughout the session to learn more.

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Unmoderated usability studies have participants test the prototypes without human guidance. Participants move through the study at their own pace and often in their own environment. Usually, the study is recorded on video, and the UX team reviews the video footage after the study. Unmoderated studies can be advantageous because they more closely simulate how a user would interact with the product in the real world.

Whether you conduct a moderated or an unmoderated usability study, a few things will remain the same:

Tasks in a usability study are actions a real user might perform in your product, like entering an address, placing an order, or making a reservation. The tasks that you ask participants to complete during the usability study should be the same tasks that an actual user would need to complete to successfully move through your product in the real world.

The script should be repeated with each participant, in the same order, to replicate the same study environment. Consistency is key here.

Participants should be representative of the product’s target users and should align with the personas you created earlier in the design process. In other words, participants in the research study should have the traits you’ve already matched with users of your product.

Usability studies can and should be conducted at every stage of the UX design process. Of course, the number of studies you conduct depends on your project’s timeline, goals, and budget. But usability studies can happen when you have a low fidelity prototype, a high fidelity prototype, or even a finished product.

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Explore usability study best practices:

Before the study begins

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Here are a few pro tips to help you ask the right questions during a usability study:

Use the same set of questions with each participant. Usability studies typically focus on one person at a time, so you want your conversations with each user to be about the same design features. Keep your research consistent.

Ask open-ended questions. Avoid asking “yes” or “no” questions. Instead, ask questions that start with “why.” This will allow for more detailed feedback and might reveal useful information you can later include in your product.

Encourage elaboration. Sometimes, the script of questions you pre-wrote while planning the study isn’t thorough enough. Ask follow-up questions if you need to dig deeper. Maybe something unexpected came up and you want to explore it, or you didn’t get enough information from a participant’s first response and need them to elaborate. If you’re unsure how to ask a follow-up question, the phrase “tell me more about that” usually works.

Ask the same question from different angles. Interviews can be awkward, so it might take awhile before you find out what participants really think. You can prepare for this delay by asking the same question from multiple angles. For example, you might ask, “How often do you go to the grocery store?” at the start of the interview; then, “How many times per week do you go to the grocery store” in the middle of the interview. The participant might give you a more detailed answer the second time around, which can help you get more accurate insights and useful data.

Don’t mention other participants. Talking about other participants can lead to privacy violations and skew the answers of the participant you’re with, which leads to inaccurate data.

Don’t ask leading questions. Be careful about how you word each question. Participants can pick up on your preconceived notions if your questions are worded in a biased way. For example, if you ask, “Why do you think apples are more popular than pears?” then the participant is primed to answer positively about apples and negatively about pears. Instead, try asking a more neutral, open-ended question, like: “Do you prefer apples or pears, and why?”

Identify biases when interviewing usability study participants

Remember implicit bias is the collection of attitudes and stereotypes we associate to people without our conscious knowledge.

These attitudes and stereotypes are often negative, exclusionary, or disempowering.

When recruiting participants for usability studies, any implicit biases you have against a particular user group might impact your expectations for how those participants will interact with the product.

Serial position effect is a psychological bias that states that when given a list of items, people are more likely to remember the first few and the last few while the items in the middle tend to blur.

Be aware that when you're interviewing participants the first and last things they reveal might stand out to you more than the feedback in the middle because of the serial position effect.

Friendliness bias describes the tendency of people to agree with those they like in order to maintain a nonconfrontational conversation. As a moderator, if you are too friendly and develop too strong a rapport with participants, there's a chance participants will want to agree with you in order to avoid confrontation.

This can stop participants from giving honest feedback. Your goal is to improve the product's design. So remind participants that you actually need honest feedback in order to improve the product.

The social desirability bias describes the tendency for people to answer questions in a way that will be viewed favorably by others.

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Introduction to note-taking methods during usability studies

Things to assess include:

Tasks participants complete. Record this in Column A.

The click path, or sequence of actions, a participant follows for each task. Record this in Column B.

Observations about participant behaviors, feelings, and pain points as they interact with the product. Record this in Column C.

Direct quotes from participants that highlight parts of their experience. Record this in Column D.

How easy or difficult you thought it was for the participant to complete each task. Record this in Column E.

Lastly, the template leaves open several extra rows where you can add any noteworthy additional observations made during the study.

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Google UX Design Certificate - Usability study note-taking spreadsheet template - Google Sheets⁠

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Google UX Design Certificate - Gmail labels usability study exemplar - Google Sheets⁠

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Course 4 Week 2 - Glossary of terms and definitions - Google Docs⁠

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