How can you get the most effective feedback on your UI prototypes?

My UX journey kickstarted with Figma, and it's undeniably one of the finest prototyping tools available, thanks to its incredibly user-friendly interface. Besides excelling in fostering seamless collaboration, real-time editing, etc. it also helps to elevate the overall productivity of the team. Its intuitive features simplify the design process for both newcomers and seasoned designers. Moreover, its's robust version control and extensive array of plugins make it the ultimate choice for collaborative and efficient UI/UX design projects. Figma has consistently proven its reliability and efficiency in my design projects making it my go-to tool.

Choosing the right prototyping tool is key as long as it suits your needs. One of my favorite prototyping tool is Protopie (requires subscription). Protopie in my opinion, is the best prototyping tool out there. Way ahead of figma

To get the most effective feedback on your UI prototypes, it's essential to conduct structured user testing sessions with a diverse group of participants who match your target audience. Use clear, open-ended questions to encourage detailed responses. Implement A/B testing to compare different designs. Record the sessions for later analysis and ask for specific feedback on usability and aesthetics. Additionally, utilizing tools for remote testing can help collect quantitative data, and professional critique from UI/UX experts can provide qualitative insights. Regularly iterating on the design based on feedback is crucial for improvement.

I began prototyping with Figma, so Figma will always hold a special place in my toolkit. That being said, I also appreciate the ability to work offline, and I feel that Adobe XD excels in that aspect. However, if you are joining a firm or company, I believe selecting prototyping software that enables seamless collaboration with your teammates is also crucial. Another point to note is that I initiate most of my wireframes on paper, so don't forget about your trusty pen and paper.

The best possible high-fidelity prototypes are replications of the final deliverable, that is able to act upon real customer interactions and scenarios. Most tools such as Figma, XD, Sketch etc all fall short of this true representation of the final thing (ask a user to fill in their username using an input field - it can't be done in these tools). Axure is a prototyping tool that does enable more interactions such as input fields, variables and conditions. So you can mostly test a 'real' version, but requires a little learning to do effectively. HTML/CSS/JS prototypes take it a step further and allow you to replicate the final thing, however there are many barriers to using this such as time, budget, knowledge etc.

What I like to do is I'll put my prototype into its own file within Figma and annotate it. I'll then drop the link to the file to whoever I'm looking for feedback from. I'll ask questions based on the type of feedback I'm looking for or areas I still have some questions about. I encourage them to leave comments directly within the prototype file and from there I can assess my work and iterate.

Once you're happy with your prototype, you need to fully understand what you are setting out to learn by testing it. Are you looking to validate a certain journey, feature, tool, concept etc? Here's a good format you can use to set your objective... We want to [explore / validate / understand] How / why / what [the thing to be tested] [the people you're aiming it at] will achieve / help / change [this outcome]

When it comes to design critique, gather up all involved stakeholders in a meeting for this purpose. In advance, send all deliverables and required context and make sure participants are well-prepared for the meeting for maximum efficiency. And the last thing you have to do is to provide clear expectations on what feedback you are expecting. Are you looking for just visual(UI) feedback? Can the user flow be changed at this phase of the design? Is the copy under consideration? Articulate any design decisions if necessary before the question is asked. When it comes to testing prototypes with users, that's another story and a broader topic where I'll contribute in another place.

To effectively gather feedback on UI prototypes, start by setting clear objectives based on user research and personas. Aim to assess usability, functionality, aesthetics, or accessibility. Craft open-ended, specific questions that probe these areas and validate your design assumptions. This approach ensures feedback is constructive, actionable, and tailored to refine your UI’s user experience.

For usability, questions could range from "Is the navigation intuitive?" to "Did you encounter any issues completing tasks?" This encourages users to reflect on their interactions with the interface. For functionality, a question might be, "Were all the features you expected to use accessible?" This helps identify any gaps between user expectations and the prototype’s capabilities. When it comes to aesthetics, questions might include, "How do you feel about the color scheme and typography?" Accessibility questions like, "Were you able to use the prototype with ease regardless of any disabilities?" ensure the design is inclusive.

Prioritizing user testing with a diverse group of individuals who represent the target audience is a way to go. I also encourage open-ended questions and constructive criticism from team members and stakeholders, fostering a culture of honest and direct feedback. This approach ensures valuable insights are received which leads to meaningful improvements in the design.

This is more often than not the hard part, at least in my experience. You need to have a large pool of users in the first place you can recruit from. If it is feasible, consider taking help from dedicated companies who cater to this requirement of recruiting participants. Askable is a good one.

I cannot overstate how important it is to work with the industry people who will be using your product to improve the prototype and later the actual product. Getting feedback and distilling it down to most common feedback can help shape your product to its best form yet.

Step 3: Utilize AI for Initial Assessments Before reaching out to your LinkedIn network, employ AI-driven tools for preliminary assessments. AI can identify usability issues, like confusing navigation or broken links. This automated analysis streamlines the feedback process and ensures that the initial issues are addressed.

For impactful UI prototype feedback, recruit participants aligned with your target audience and user groups. Seek a diverse sample reflecting user personas' characteristics, needs, and preferences. Segment participants based on goals, tasks, contexts, and scenarios. Tailor prototypes and questions to each segment, ensuring relevant and insightful feedback that enhances user experience.

Always be ready for feedback. It is good to prototype your product, but you need to get feedback from users or key stakeholders. Anything they find confusing will give you insights on where to improve, should it require iteration on the design itself or the prototype.

Make sure the participants are comfortable criticising your work. Don’t mention that it’s *your* design unless they ask. And make sure to let them know that it’s easy to make changes to a prototype. Tell them something like this: “We want constructive criticism in order to improve the design. It’s easy to make changes at this stage of development, so now is the time to find and fix problems!”

When selecting users to do testing, make sure you choose a diverse range of users. Most of the time, internal subject-matter experts(the creators, the doers) will find different issues than the intended user. For example, a prototype for a mobile app should be tested by a variety of users including heavy and light, occasional and frequent users. It should also be tested by a diverse group of internal users, so mix in some different departments. The feedback you get will come from angles you haven't considered.

Feedback is an awesome tool, I tend to accumulate as much of it as I can to create useful and great UX. If I can, I will always go for a mix of various techniques, doing in-person audits, or remote ones. Each one has its advantages and disadvantages and that is the reason I prefer a healthy mix of different approaches since that will provide me and my team with the most honest and precise opinions.

When collecting feedback on your UI prototypes, the approach should be tailored to your goals and the audience you're engaging with. Choose from in-person sessions or remote meet-ups, utilizing tools that best showcase your prototype and facilitate communication. Surveys and polls can help you cast a wider net, snagging both the numbers and the narrative behind user reactions. Always start by clarifying the why and what of your feedback session, ensuring participants are informed and onboard, giving consent for their input to steer your design's course.

Remember that prioritizing feedback does more than merely validate the user testing and add credibility to the experience design, it also enables furthered adoption of human centered design principles especially within an organization that is still navigating its respective digital transformation.

I like to collect data from different users and then put all their feedback into sticky notes (digital or paper) and group them by similarity. What themes stand out, mentioned by most of the users? Which were noticed by one or two? You can also arrange the sticky notes along your prototype and see where the clusters are.

A large pool of feedback is important when making changes to your prototypes. Enough data is needed to evaluate what opportunities are actually impactful to clients. For example, using heatmaps, if you dont have a large enough user group, and once you remove invalid data points, you might not have enough concrete feedback to understand which issues are causing the most client hiccups. When prioritizing updates it's also important to consider effort vs. value. Minimal effort to address a moderate issue may be be an "easy-win" compared to a large issue that takes extensive effort. Show-stopper issues that don't allow intended use to be completed should always take priority. Your product or service should always be minimally viable (MVP).

This involves identifying design strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Various methods and tools like affinity diagrams, feedback matrices, or heatmaps can be used to organize and visualize feedback data. Prioritization should consider factors such as issue severity, frequency, impact, and the resources needed to address them, ensuring that critical issues are tackled first. This systematic approach helps in refining the UI design effectively.

After gathering feedback on your UI prototypes, dive into analysis. Think of it as detective work—what does the evidence say about your design’s pros and cons? Tools like affinity diagrams help in clustering similar feedback, while heatmaps reveal user interaction hotspots. Now, to prioritize, consider a card sorting exercise. This hands-on method allows you to physically (or digitally) move user comments around, grouping them into categories like 'critical fix' or 'nice to have.' Weigh the issues based on how often they arise, their impact on user experience, and the resources needed for a fix. This visual and interactive approach brings clarity, turning a mountain of feedback into a clear path forward.

Remember that users may ask for a solution rather than pointing out a problem. Ask, "What is the user trying to do? What is their desired outcome?" This might lead you to a better solution than the idea suggested.

In my previous project, I sought feedback on my UI prototypes by conducting usability testing with a diverse user group from our target audience. By asking open-ended questions, I encouraged participants to express their thoughts freely, ensuring honest and specific feedback. Close observation during interactions provided valuable insights into user struggles and confusion. After collecting feedback, I meticulously analyzed the data, identifying patterns to iterate the prototypes effectively. Employing tools and analytics to track user behavior further enhanced our understanding. This continuous refinement approach resulted in a user-friendly, intuitive UI design that seamlessly aligned with user expectations and needs.

1) Know your audience ? Who you are sharing with will determine how you present your work, in what level of detail and/or interaction, in what software, and with what amount of annotation. 2) Defining your "ask" ? You'll waste your and your team's time if you don't explicitly define what type of feedback you are asking for. For example "Please test the new onboarding flow and comment on the effectiveness of the new loading animations" is going to be much more productive than "Please take a look when you have time." 3) Delivering on time ? Seems obvious, but if you ask for feedback too late and your engineering has jumped ahead of you, then your updates might go unused and/or engineering will need to backtrack. Communication is key ?

the most important thing in my experience so far is to get your target audience and stick to them. No amount of knowledge and fancy design with a great workflow will be successful if you are creating something with the wrong target audience in mind. After all, we are trying to solve the problem in a specific field with a specific user in mind.