Quick with long-term research capabilities, but could use a facelift.
Updated November 17, 2020

Quick with long-term research capabilities, but could use a facelift.

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with UserTesting

UserTesting allows us to test and validate assumptions, survey usability, socialize our products' experiences, and conduct competitive analysis. We use it primarily on our Product Design team, but the Product department as a whole understands the value of user studies. Engineers have participated in highlight-reel reviews which have led to interesting ideation sessions for addressing real-world issues.
  • Participant turnaround is same day — usually within an hour or two.
  • Competitive analysis can be conducted on any public facing products.
  • Usability testing can be standardized with the ability to export results.
  • Could benefit from templates for standard research forms (SUS, NPS, SEQ, etc) with calculated results.
  • Sharing video highlights could be easier — it can be complicated to just send colleagues a snippet.
  • Integration with other tools could expand usage (Optimal Workshop, InVision, etc).
  • Usability analytics could use some controls (track specific task time, clicks, etc).
  • Fail faster: Features that would others fail in production now fail in design.
  • Create baseline metrics: Production A/B tests now have better assumptions.
  • Find unicorns: Features that might otherwise go to the backlog can now be proven worthy of inclusion.
Without full-time research, it can be difficult to slow down and test. Work needs to be done to advocate for more testing. On the contrary, sometimes too much testing can be requested for small aesthetic changes that have little to no perceived value. This can increase confidence but can get in the way of larger studies. Internally educating on the usage of UserTesting may be necessary.
The interface could use an overhaul. Lots of useful features are buried or obfuscated. For new users, it can be intimidating to run the first study but too easy to run meaningless tests. A linear approach to onboarding could help team members get up to speed quickly. It can take a few studies to produce meaningful results. There is no "recommended path" approach to conducting a study that is made obvious.
We've been able to not only test new features and iterate on designs and interactions, but conduct long-term studies that produce constant results. We have created a dashboard that tracks usability over time and correlates feedback to specific feature releases. This helps us to understand the effect of our work beyond the bottom line.
UserTesting works best for public-facing products. It can be difficult to test unreleased products. User studies are only as good as the researcher so biases can be a real problem when scripting a study and interpreting the results. An untrained team might not be able to utilize the platform appropriately and a mature research team might have their own preferred methods.