User testing always works, and even if you are conducting a usability test with the wrong user, still there are all chances that you will get good feedback and improvement suggestions.

Don’t Make it a Big Deal

Most people assume that testing is time consuming, costly, and it needs to be a big deal. Sometimes you hear “It is too early to test our product.” Crap. It is never too early to share your product with the user, even if it is an initial idea. If you make it a big deal, you won’t do it early enough. Including feedback from end user at an early stage also make sure that you are on the right track. Remember, keep it simple so you’ll keep doing it.

How often should we test?

• It depends on the project timeline. If it is a short-term project that you have to finish in two months, keep it weekly and test it bi-weekly if it is a long-term project.
• Doing it on fixed days dramatically increases the chances that team members will make time to come and watch at least some of the sessions.
• If you’re working on improving the existing product, you’ll also want to test it before you start the improvement process, so you’ll know what’s working and what’s not working.
• Then throughout the project, continue to test everything the team produces, beginning with your first rough sketches and continuing with wireframes, page compositions, prototypes, and finally actual product.

Enlist the tasks you want to test

Usability testing mostly depends on the fact that you have new available untested tests or improved versions of the prototype you previously tested. For instance, if you are testing the checkout process, the tasks might be: Review Cart, Edit Items in Cart, Delete Items from Cart, Review Payment Options, Review Address Book, Review Delivery Information, Checkout, and Confirmation.

Who should facilitate the session?

The person who sits with the participant and leads them through the test is called the facilitator. One who tends to be patient, calm, empathetic, a good listener, and easy to befriend should facilitate the session.

Who should observe the session?

You can include as many observers as you want, there is no harm. It’s a transformative experience that dramatically changes the way your managers think: They should get the idea that users aren’t all like them.

Some Tips for Usability Testing

Welcome your candidate. Remember they are very important; they are participating for your benefit, and the success of your product depends on their feedback and actions. Ask a couple of questions about them and get to know them, who they are, whether are they familiar with computers and the internet, or what they do to earn a living.

Inform the user to treat your product as roughly and make as many mistakes as they want. We are testing our product, not the users. Do not embarrass them.

Give them a brief introduction about your product (don’t give them too much information, let them find out what you are selling on your website or what your product is all about). Tell them politely that you would not be able to answer their queries during the session but will answer once we’re done.

After the test, you can ask the participant questions about their experience and ask the observer if they have any questions for the user. Finally, thank the user and pay what was promised, and show them to the door.

Take five minutes break before calling the next user and discuss the brief results with the observers.

Example: For a better understanding of the journey mapping process, I am picking a hypothetical example of a company called ‘Super Builder Software’ (Cool name huh.. I just came up with this 😂). This company provides a digital solution to contractors. These contractors usually build roofs of houses. And the software provides contractors with the selection of material, size of the roof, efforts, time, and manpower required for the project.

Scenario: One fine day the boss at the software company asks why we don’t have enough feedback or reviews post-service. In this case, we have knowledge of the business, product, and our users and we know at which step the problem arises. Usually, we expect to receive feedback after the roof is installed without any big issues.

Problem: Not receiving enough reviews/feedback from the contractors.

What is Journey Map?

A journey map is an artifact or visualization that provides insight into an end-user trying to accomplish a specific task to achieve a goal. A journey map usually consists of, Time, Action, Influence or forces, Customer perspective, Company perspective, Encounters and Outcomes.

The main star of the journey mapping is our user (customer), and this user has some expectations, and we create scenarios around these expectations. We put these scenarios as actions, mindsets and emotions under the phases. All these provide us insights into the opportunities we have to improve the user experience.

Remember, no two journey maps are exactly the same. The key is to find a process that works for your situation and adapt it as needed. If you are new to journey mapping and you are wondering where to start the answer depends on your situation and goal. Every other UX practitioner has adapted this process differently. And reading these journey maps is also a tricky job. As you gain more experience, you will likely begin to read them in different ways. For example, observe someone who is using Google maps for the first (it is hard to find a first-time Google map user but it is worth trying). One thing is for sure first-time Google map users will have a hard time figuring out all those different icons, colours, navigation routes, and where to start or where to end sort of things. And with time these users will be comfortable going to unknown places using Google maps. The same principle applies to journey maps.

There are three types of Journey Maps:

Experience Maps

Experience maps are the most general type. Let’s go back to our ‘Super Builder Software (SBS)’ example. If you were a UX designer at SBS, you might use an experience map to explore the entire journey of a contractor who needs to measure roofs prior to ordering materials and start building roofs with or without software. Absolutely no need to talk about any software product here. This will make it easier for you to think outside your own product and find ways to expand it.

For exploring new ideas if you consider your existing product and users it will be toilsome to think outside the box. With the experience map approach, it is easy to leave our biases aside and look at the unexplored areas in the market for evolving into a better product. Experience maps help us by encouraging us to look beyond the customer relationship.

Customer Journey Maps

Customer journey maps are very similar to experience maps, but they focus on a specific group of people as customers who use your product or service. In the previous section under the experience map, it is explained how a general contractor receives an order to build a roof and what her journey looks like. A customer journey map shows how a contractor uses your system to receive an accurate estimate to build a roof, register her emotions when she goes through the checkout process, and the post-completion order interactions.

A customer journey map identifies good, bad or missing interactions between a user and the business. A good customer journey map should read something like “A person with characteristics a, b, c who is trying to accomplish goal usually goes through phases x, y, z and experience product d through the customer touchpoints j, k, l.” (IxDF)

“Maximizing satisfaction with customer journeys has the potential not only to increase customer satisfaction by 20% but also lift revenue up by 15% while lowering the cost of serving customers by as much as 20%”

– McKinsey, The Three Cs of Customer Satisfaction

Returning to our SBS example and use a case scenario. Our boss is not happy with the number of reviews we are receiving. Although we are processing a good number of orders still contractors do not leave reviews at the end to share their experience with our product.

In the context of the above example of the customer journey map, we can clearly get to the conclusion that we are not getting enough reviews/feedback because we not getting in touch with the user after completing the order. It is good to include the link in the checkout email but there has to be a specific email separately asking for the review once the contractor has finished building the roof using our estimates.

Service Blueprint

The scope of the service blueprint is larger than the customer journey map. Its focus is on the customer, customer touchpoints with products, employees and processes that support the customer touchpoints.

Because it intentionally includes multiple supporting levels of the organization, a service blueprint can serve as a planning tool to avoid surprises from the business side of the experience.

For example, in the SBS service blueprint will require a checkout interface, third-party checkout integration, and customer support for the post-service experience. By including all these in the service blueprint SBS can make sure they are getting positive reviews and constructive feedback for product improvement. This artifact will also help SBS to improve their backend system whether it is the human side or the technology side of the service.

Another benefit of having the service blueprint is you can easily tell how a new feature will have an impact on different features and touchpoints or on the backend. For example, if SBS plans to include drone service to capture the 3D shape of the roof of a house to increase the estimate accuracy, as a UX Designer it will be much smoother for you to tell the stakeholder how this new service will impact other sides of the business.

I hope this will help you get started with Journey Maps in your organization. Please feel free to provide improvement suggestions.

And similarly, we store those picked objects in our memory. Another example here could be, you may recall bricks on the pavement from your last visit to a friend’s house. But you will definitely not be able to recall the details, like, the pattern and grain colours on those bricks.

Most of the time we miss an object because something else grabs our focus if the object we looking for is not highlighted or not separated from the background (the term for this is ‘Missing Frame’).

We, as humans, lack the bandwidth to focus on everything, we pick and choose the things in a view that matters to us, basically tuning out what goes on elsewhere. This is called ‘selective attention.’

Who is more prone to face this problem?

• A person with weak eyesight without glasses may experience more problems as it is hard to focus.
• A person with cognitive impairment (someone with trouble remembering, learning new things, and concentrating).
• A person who is in hurry.
• When there are too many objects in view.

How designers can help?

A designer with knowledge of Recognition and Framing Ambiguity concepts can help segregate the important information so that users don’t miss it. With the understanding of the user, designers can make interfaces, clear, concise, familiar, responsive, and consistent so it is easier for users to find relative information easily.

For more information on this topic, I would recommend to go for “The Brain and Technology: Brain Science in Interface Design” by Brian Whitworth available on Interaction Design Foundation (IxDF).