Item: UserTesting
Rating: 7
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use UserTesting across our product and design teams to do both initial qualitative research to better understand customer needs and thought processes as well as for later-stage (more evaluative) testing as our software gets ready for release. We've used both our own participants (great to be able to get them to schedule a mutually convenient time) and the panel. I've been pleasantly surprised how easy it is to find relatively hard-to-reach cohorts (given the vast size of the panel).

Pros and Cons

Seamless research session logistics.
Great collaborative UI.
Participants love that it's built on Zoom, so it's familiar.

Participants still struggle with sharing their screen.
The actual product UI is glitchy and sometimes laggy, which is infuriating.
The need to wait for transcripts to be done is farcical; just let me in already.

Return on Investment

We make far fewer product guesses now.
Teams have no excuse for not being evidence led.
We understand our customers better.

Usability

I've been both pleasantly and unpleasantly surprised by UserTesting.

Participant end: I think it's fair to say that UserTesting is really as simple a product as is on the market for this purpose. It's still hard for some participants but (other than just dropping straight to Google Meet with no bells and whistles), it does the job, and seems to be familiar to most people.
Professional end: UserTesting UI feels like it needs a bit more user testing. I'm only a fairly casual user (maybe ten sessions in three months) and I've found a few UI bugs, plenty of eccentricity/quirky design choices, and some of these significantly detract from the real-time use of the product.

Customer Insights

We've been able to do significantly more research--our scale problem (reaching participants easily) seems to be largely behind us, which is a massive win. We have moved away from guesswork making decisions based on customer insights or feedback. Our time to market is probably the same but I'm much more confident that we're building the right things and that they'll work.

Alternatives Considered

Google Hangouts Meet, Zoom and Microsoft Teams

I've not evaluated other dedicated products in this domain myself but know that we went through a significant exercise internally before we selected UserTesting. I think the best comparison is with manual logistics for screening, setting up meetings and using, for example, Google Meet or Teams natively. It probably comes down to how much the time of your UX/product team is worth in terms of the tradeoff and whether it's feasible to find participants in your domain.

Key Insights

Do you think UserTesting delivers good value for the price?

Are you happy with UserTesting's feature set?

Yes

Did UserTesting live up to sales and marketing promises?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of UserTesting go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy UserTesting again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Google Hangouts Meet, Google Workspace (formerly G Suite), Microsoft Teams

Likelihood to Recommend

Appropriate: UserTesting is probably the best thing on the market at what it does. It's perfectly suited to any remote testing scenario (with your own participants or their panel), particularly at short notice.

Less appropriate: Have a bit of a think about your target audience. Are they well represented by the people available via this panel? Also consider whether their personal devices will be up to the task of running browser-intensive apps and whether they're ready for sharing video.

Usability Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Quick to learn Feel confident using	Inconsistent

Easy Tasks

Participant setup.
Annotation.
Transcription.

Difficult Tasks

The folder/org hierarchy of the sessions is clunky.
Transcription is slow.
Text entry is laggy.

UserTesting will probably be worth it

Overall Satisfaction with UserTesting