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Great for "shotgun" researching multiple users all at the same time
December 13, 2020

Great for "shotgun" researching multiple users all at the same time

Craig Scull | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with UserTesting

UserTesting is being used by the Design department I work in. We use UserTesting to reach qualified users for unmoderated formative testing of new interface designs, or for user acceptance evaluations of functionality to determine fit to their work and use cases. We have also used UserTesting to ask participants to share sample documents, demonstrate their use cases and explain the broader context/needs around document workflows.
  • Usability testing on phone and web
  • Understanding real world use cases
  • Understanding real world document examples
  • I wish the interface was not implemented as "pages" where you have to save your work or risk losing it if your connection drops. I would prefer to have my work autosave or use an application I download to my computer.
  • It can sometimes be hard to tell where people are tapping when watching the recording of people using their phone
  • Video clips are very easy to make, but there's no way to rename clips after you save them
  • The speed of recruiting allows me to iteratively test and experiment with wording when necessary to get to the point where I know it is being understood which in turn improves the credibility of the research results
  • We haven't yet released the software that I've been testing most of this year, so I can't comment on business impact yet
So far so good. I have only had one support issue, where a test was getting paused because participants were unable to proceed forward in the prototype we were testing. Support more or less helped me to identify where the problem was. I wish they would have allowed me to watch the videos so I could see exactly what was happening, but we managed to deduce what was going on and fix things.
Not a 10 because it functions using a "web page" model with no autosave. You have to deliberately save things, which can result in lost work if you have a connection problem or leave the tab open all day without saving changes.
The biggest "unique" benefit is being able make more design iterations than before and in turn fix more problems faster than if I had recruited and moderated the studies entirely myself. I estimate that at least 2-3 days of business time are saved per study, which is not trivial given how fast we are trying to move.
UserInterviews is a great service for recruiting and scheduling people for qualitative interviews and problem space interviews. It is less efficient than UserTesting for formative, usability research because you need to fit the participants into your schedule, need to take the time to interview people 1-at-a-time whereas on UserTesting you can have multiple people participating in research all at the same time.
Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365), Slack
My experiences have only been with the unmoderated research side of UserTesting, so that is a caveat.

Well suited for usability testing on phone and web, understanding real world use cases, understanding real world document examples.

Not as well suited for problem-space research where semi-structured interviews are used to take a participant-led approach to the conversation and probe interesting things that come up impromptu in the discussion. Not as well suited for snow-ball sampling where you may be using interviews to try to "navigate" in the org to find the right people to talk to, whose job titles you may not even know in advance.

Well suited for studies involving robust prototypes. Not as well suited for studies with golden path prototypes that don't support people clicking the "wrong" things or exploring.