What are the best tips for applying feedback from Usability Testing?

Prioritising issues from the user feedback data is a challenging task especially when its overwhelming and conflicting. Here are some steps that helps us to prioritise issues from the user feedback data: - Categorise the issues by type, such as bugs, improvement, feature requests, severity level and usability, etc. - Estimate the effort and resources required to resolve each issue, in terms of time, cost and complexity. - Evaluate the impact and value of each issue, in terms of how much it improves the product quality, functionality and competitiveness. - Review and adjust the priorities regularly, based on new feedback, data and changes in the market and customer expectations.

While severity and frequency need to be taken into account, severity needs to be weighed more strongly than frequency. An example would be a usability issue that prevents the users from achieving their task altogether, for example when they cannot cannot proceed and are stuck in a loop without being able to find a way out. Even if this happens only once in your sample, this means that it needs to get the highest priority! Remember, it is unlikely that you encountered the only person in the world with this issue in your small sample. In reality, this will happen to an unknown percentage of your users. So always fix the gravest issues first even if less severe issues occur more frequently.

? Categorize feedback: Identify main themes, patterns, gaps. Focus on areas that need improvement. ? Prioritize feedback: Consider impact on user experience and business goals. ? Develop a plan: Address each issue with specific changes, fixes, or additions. ? Test changes: Ensure changes solve problems identified in usability testing. ? Iterate: Continue testing with users to ensure product meets their needs. Additional tips: ? Be specific when making changes. ? Don't try to fix everything at once. ? Get feedback from your team. ? Communicate with your users.

Drawing from my experiences, I would like to share two valuable tips: one to consider before embarking on a usability test and another to keep in mind afterwards. Before conducting usability testing, define clear objectives and create specific tasks or scenarios that users will perform. Having a well-structured testing plan will make it easier to interpret and apply feedback later. After usability testing, categorize the identified issues into critical, major, and minor categories. Focus on addressing critical and major issues first, as these have the most significant impact on user satisfaction and usability.

Given enough time and user interviews, you will find there are certain biases that crop up in the course of usability testing. It's important to recognize these patterns, evaluate, and prioritize. Don't lose focus on issues that have severity and frequency. I'll share an anonymized example, over several occasions we had a volunteer surface specific functionality he wanted personalized. We surveyed and asked in others interviews and could not find a single user with this need. The personalization desired would not improve the usability and possibly broke accessibility. It was simply not necessary within the workflow.

An example of categories for the wider variety of feedback is against the product area. This helps assign relevant feedback into the right team. Each team can then dive deeper into the user feedback to arrange by severity and effort needed to resolve them. A matrix can be used to plot the opportunities.

Categorization brings structure to the feedback, making it more manageable. It simplifies analysis and helps identify recurring themes or issues within the design, aiding in effective prioritization. One of the key benefits is prioritization. Categorizing feedback allows you to focus on high-impact areas, ensuring that critical issues are addressed promptly. Visual tools like affinity diagrams or card sorting can enhance this process by visually representing feedback patterns. Categorization is an ongoing process. As you act on feedback and make changes, new insights emerge. Continuously gathering, categorizing, and analyzing feedback refines your UI-UX design over time, resulting in a more user-centered product and improved satisfaction.

Validating solutions after categorizing and prioritizing feedback is crucial. Don't assume solutions will entirely fix usability issues or meet user expectations. Conduct additional usability tests with an open mind to uncover potential problems. Involving users from the start and using both quantitative data and qualitative feedback enhances the process.

It isn`t always necessary to retest the new solutions. While in an ideal world, it`s of course better to retest to see if you got it right, there are findings where the answer is just crystal clear and rather obvious once the issue was discovered. You`ll notice if the finding is in this category. For example, there may not even be a discussion about how to solve it because the solution is obvious to all team members. So if time and ressources are limited, don`t feel like you cannot make any changes without retesting (especially if research becomes a bottle neck). You can always keep an eye on behavioural data once the changes are live or test the new solutions in an A/B test. And if they reveal issues, retest.

The most effective instrument to make stakeholders care about your findings are quotes and videosnippets. You as the researcher have seen the pain points first-hand. You know how strong the pain was or how much the users struggled. By just naming the issue, this information is lost. A quote from a tester or a video that shows somebody looking for something and not finding it, makes the people in the presentation witness these things first-hand as well. This often is the most important bit of the presentation.

Communicating testings results to various stakeholders is challenging. Here are few tips that will empower you: 1. Make sure the report is concise, provide summary, and details for stakeholders who may want to know more. 2. Pack your report with recordings and highlights from the testings to give the team the way to emphasize with their users. 3. Make sure to mention the issues and their priority (mild,mid,high) along with the impacted flows. 4. Pack your report with suggestions and potential solutions. 5. Mention the forecasted ROI after applying these edits. Make the numbers clear and prepare to answer the business-related questions. 6. Remember; not all people are usability experts, try to talk each stakeholder’s langauge.

Try to find ways that resonate with other teams to communicate your findings (especially in an environment with lower UX awareness). You might want to highlight these findings in a short, minimal powerpoint to show what you tested, why and the final outcome.

If feedback doesn’t make it back into the development process (or isn’t conveyed effectively) it’s useless. So seek to leverage feedback from usability testing to make sure that the team not only hears from their users, but also responds to their needs. ...and the more creative and compelling you are, the more likely they are to listen. Here are some ways to make feedback effective in agile: Highlight Reels/Clips: Highlight reels are a great way to share compelling findings and moments of insight. “Newsletter”: A sprint-based communication (video, slack/teams, email) focusing on customer insights and research-related topics. Research Repository: Distributed access to insights: structured, atomized, and accessible for self-discovery.

Effective communication of usability testing results is crucial. It's not just about resolving issues; it's about conveying the rationale behind design decisions and their impact on user experience and business goals. Clear, jargon-free communication with the use of visual aids, along with active stakeholder engagement, is essential. Informing all stakeholders is important because these results originate from various sources and impact multiple aspects of the project. Keeping stakeholders updated throughout the design process also fosters collaboration and mutual understanding.

In my opinion, learning from usability testing is a crucial step for professional growth in the field of design. Reflecting on what worked well and what didn't helps identify opportunities for improvement and gain valuable experience. A recommendation would be to establish a structured process for feedback and continuous improvement. This could include creating a lessons learned report after each project, documenting successes, challenges, and areas for improvement. Additionally, seeking feedback from stakeholders and end users about their experience with usability testing can provide valuable insights for future projects. Continuous learning and adaptation are key to ongoing success in user-centered design.

Consider how you prepared for your testing. Were there steps you could have added or removed? Are there better ways you can do documentation so the research is easier to digest at a later date?

Don't force the results of a user test to match a preconceived conclusion. Sometimes a user test will provide inconclusive results. Use this opportunity to refine your primary question or the design that is being tested and try again. If the results of any user test come back inconclusive, you aren't asking the right questions yet.

I think it all begins with careful planning. Before diving into testing, take a moment to craft a clear strategy for how you'll collect and manage feedback. This systematic approach ensures that the insights you gather lead to meaningful improvements. When designing your tests, pay attention to the details. To minimize bias, keep participants in the dark about the specific issues you're addressing. You can shake things up by randomizing tasks among a diverse group. Also, stay objective with your metrics and if you need to, bring in colleagues for fresh perspectives.

Your testing needs to evidence work to date and support future decision making and should be guided by the clear pathway set out in your research plan. That means that your findings should be specific and directly answer the questions you set out to answer, and should be synthesised against the methodology your team follows. For instance, if you are using a jobs to be done framework, then you would synthesise your findings by the impact on each stage of the core job to be done. While it can be useful to come back with lots of insights into aesthetics, it will be harder to get stakeholders on board when their business priority was to improve the transactions step.

It's important to recognize the different areas where you and your team's biases can creep into the process. From the types of participants (Is the sample diverse? Do they represent the widest possible audience?) to how you conduct the usability testing (Where might the test results be skewed?) to how you interpret the results ( Are you considering how confirmation bias could impact your interpretation?)