UserTesting

UserTesting is ideal for big companies that work in an agile setting. If you are working in a fast paces environment and need to get some insights fast, UserTesting helps a lot. If you are creative, and know how to ask questions, you would be surprised how fast UserTesting starts to show its value. We are a small team and we try to minimize our work load as much as we can by optimizing our research operations, so making unmoderated tests are very important to us. If you are a small company with limited resources though, it might be expensive. Then, buying multiple tools that cover different areas might actually become more affordable.

Great for observing, hearing, and asking. Bad for getting solid opinions unless you had a lot of people for stats. You cannot act on 5 people casually saying, “I like this over that,” because many times the testers just want to finish the test and give false positives.

UserTesting is really great when you want to get insights on a prototype. You can have participants walk through the prototype and conduct speak out loud so you can hear directly from them on what they like, dislike and any sources of confusion. If you want to be able to probe or have a conversation with users you could recruit through UserTesting but it would like be more efficient and cost saying to use Zoom.

We use UT in all areas of our design and development process.

It's a fantastic platform for remote qualitative interviews, both moderated and unmoderated. It allows you some organizational capabilities with data, but is not sufficient as a repository.

It is good tool to talk to customers of a competitor products and understand the strength and weaknesses
Conduct exploratory research to learn what potential users will need or how to improve a current product
Conduct usability studies and short studied to test certain design ideas and prototypes before commiting to the idea

UserTesting is great for:
Conducting surveys
Video responses
National users
International users

User Testing is not so great for:
Niche user types

Its strength is in usability testing and testing designs with users. Another key strength of UserTesting is its panel. Combined, it's incredible for getting quick feedback on usability. With that said, many of the panel members are used to taking tests and generally more technologically savvy. I've heard many words like intuitive more in testing now. However, I do think if you're focused on watching how people are using designs and are structuring tasks appropriately, you can still learn a lot from people who are familiar with design testing.

With that said, I do not believe UserTesting and any qualitative research should be used solely for validation. It is important to think about sample size and confidence quality. It's not really appropriate for message testing. It also can't present multiple concepts in a randomized order, so I might defer to using a different tool if you're in that stage of design.

For people who have zero experience when it comes to designing a usability test, the UserTesting platform will be a good start as it is beginner friendly. UserTesting platform is quick to learn how the platform works as the interface is minimal, it also provides courses where they give walk new users through the features. However, when it comes to asking the right questions to get a genuine reaction from the participants, new users should learn how to avoid steering participants in a certain direction, causing them to give biased answers.

UserTesting is perfect for landing page reviews, product comparisons, copy editing and focus group work. I set up a multi-varied landing page sequence and had users walk through the different versions of the pages to see which one was the easiest to understand. Hearing feedback on the title copy which was clear to me but not clear to the user helped me realize how I could clarify and simplify my page copy to make sure users can navigate the site knowing what to expect upon signing up.

Honestly, the functionality of this software is one of the best on the market. It does an incredible job of really dialing in on what you want to know and getting access to testers.

Best suited to get quick results where protons are up and ready to go for testing. Not that great for native mobile app test prototypes to emulate the swipe and side scroll action. Dev teams and security teams are apprehensive of using the SDK, so a workaround for that would be appreciated.

If you have a product concept for digital software (web/mobile/desktop) user testing is the best Platform for an initial user evaluation and to identify core features and relevant experience aspects to the users. For detail design and product definition and also A/B testing of multiple visual solutions for specific UX patterns are also one of the best tools in terms of simplicity and speed to structure continuous usability testing during design and development or agile product design & dev. It is also a great tool in validation software and portal content architecture and IA and in validating content strategy and user understanding.

Well suited when you need to run quick studies (30-60 min) on a product and get a deep understanding of how users interact with it. Not suitable if you are working with live software that needs upwards of 1 hour to test, as it only allows for 60-minute sessions right now.

UserTesting is a good fit for discovery-stage and qualitative research when you want to understand user motivations and present analysis using evidence from in-person research sessions. It's also good for getting quick feedback on an as-needed basis for smaller decisions. UserTesting is not suited for quantitative applications, where sites like Qualtrics are a better fit.

In my experience, UserTesting is most successful when you have a working prototype ... although that speaks more to the participants, maybe, than it does to the platform. It just makes it easier on the participants when you can have over a few screens that work with links and users can navigate so that they don't have to image or guess. However, with that said, I almost never have a working prototype and often need to use static screens and I have to ask users to guess where a link will take them and that's also very successful. Sometimes, I even use UserTesting to ask customers questions without showing anything at all. I do that rarely but when I need a quick answer, I know UserTesting can deliver.

I run unmoderated usability studies a few times a month for products or projects at all points of development. I like gathering insight into concepts, even just by presenting written ideas to participants and getting feedback on advertising drafts or early-stage campaigns. The videos UserTesting captures for usability studies are easy to manage. I love the built-in transcripts, which are more accurate than nearly any other captioning tool I've ever used, and the way videos are broken down by task for easy analysis. I regularly make use of the creation and editing of Highlight Reels, so I can show my stakeholders behavioral trends and pain points in an emotional and hard-hitting way.

When running a test on the first impression of a product then user testing has been beneficial, if a product is not right from the first stage then there is more that is going to need to be changed. Having customer feedback at the start can also help to move the product forward and shape the next stage.

I've used UserTesting to test for and against situations. I've used it to prove why we should kill off a feature, and to support how our IA should be organized. I've used it for discovery, and seeing how users prefer to shop. When testing prototypes, I would love to see a better, or more easier, solution for InVision, and prototyping.

The application is well suited for scenarios in which qualitative feedback is needed quickly. It allows teams to target specific demographic populations that further increase the likelihood of getting relevant feedback. In creating a cohort of panelists, there are robust features that enable companies to narrow audience segments by age range, industry, salary range, regions of the country, etc.. UserTesting even allows for the ability to build your own customized groups. One of the challenges and a potential area of growth could be making it easier to find niche audiences. For example, we needed to test C-suite executives within financial institutions. We ended up relying more on our relationships with these folks when it came to getting the data we needed.

Asking users how they feel and what they think is a vital part of ANY product development. UserTesting has upgraded our team from Google Spreadsheets and Zoom calls to complete remote validation that if set up properly can deliver invaluable insights to any team within minutes.

I would highly recommend it for unmoderated usability testing. If you need to test your product with a broad audience, UserTesting will be able to recruit users in less than a day, and you will have your results in quickly. Moreover, the breakdown tools UserTesing provides really help with analyzing the data and breaking it into digestible chunks.

It is the bread and butter of my UX research practice! It is consistently a high-quality source of participants, I'm able to draft up and launch tests super quickly, and results come in very fast. The video player has a lot of great functionality, and I absolutely love making clips and sharing them via hyperlinks with people in my org to help grow empathy for our customers. I have had the most success with the tool for screen-recorded web or app tasks, as well as mobile ethnography where users show me around their space (at home). This tool is not as well suited for longitudinal/out in the wild ethnography (needing users to complete multiple tasks over the course of a time period) or be out somewhere in the world, like at a mall. I personally don't use it much for standard IDIs, but it could easily be used as your go-to for one-on-one interviews without task-based or screen recording components.

Great for any team that does usability testing or interviews. The platform allows you to conduct these types of tests quickly and efficiently allowing your team to get more done in a shorter amount of time. The quality of the users is also great. The few times that I got less than desirable responses, those instances were handled well.

UserTesting is essential for testing the user experience of wireframes, landing pages, web journeys, marketing messaging, and more. We've found that it is an integral part of our launch process for products. While UserTesting provides the "why" behind the demonstrated behavior of users, it should also be coupled with quantitative analysis, such as Qualtrics, for a broader scope.