UserTesting

UserTesting is a great way to quickly gain user or customer feedback in both generative and evaluative research studies. Want to better understand who your users are but don't have time to be on moderated interviews, UserTesting can help. Want to gain early feedback on design concepts, they can help you there too.

It was good but would have been more effective with more natural participants, i.e., first-time test participants and fewer professional testers.

It's so fast to test a concept with a real user! This is a good and easy way to create a video reel to explain pain points on the interface. We had some issues with the firewall when we used our personal external users (a client based in a government agency) to test. It was harder to set up an environment for them to bypass their own security rules.

UserTesting is excellent for solving complex content problems. A lot of work I do is based on compliance messaging, some of which is convoluted and confusing for users. If I can test variants of the content on users to find a way that's both compliant and user friendly then I've done my job well, UserTesting is essential in helping me do that. Regarding less appropriate scenarios, I honestly can't think of anything specific that affects my career. It would not be easy to use for physical product testing, considering the platform is online only.

Use UserTesting if you need to recruit participants QUICKLY to get fast results. If you're running a particularly stringent project, UserTesting's screener tool isn't the most rigorous as I've had several participants who shouldn't have qualified based on the screener questions pass through and end up as participants in my studies. If strict adherence to participant recruitment guidelines is of top priority, you might want to use a more traditional approach to recruitment.

Good/well suited:
- Industry/competitive analysis
- Quick perception test
- Content analysis
- Early & late stage prototype testing
- Basic usability testing

Less suited
- API testing, personalization testing

For usability testing, it's perfect. It allows a variety of type of questions and the unlimited plan allows you to test everything, which is nice because you don't have to choose what to test.
It was promoted as a "test everything" tool, but once we wanted to renew, the sales team did not like our power usage and was very unfriendly in making offers.

UserTesting is well suited for testing ideas and validating designs - through preference testing we've been able to determine which designs meet customer needs and can be put through development, without wasting time and resources on designs that will fail. We've also used UserTesting card sorting feature to help refine hierarchy for new pages, allowing us to see exactly what customers prioritize when making decisions.

Mainly to test products from industries that are well-established and have a huge use base of users (e.g., beauty, health, bank applications, etc). I would not recommend it for things that are too niche (e.g. French card mobile games) because the tool doesn't have enough filters or screening questions to allow researchers to recruit participants from UserTesting userbase. Probably this is on purpose right?

UserTesting has been pivotal for understanding the digital experience on our site for users, identifying pain points which can influence Business Cases, Re-designs, Refinements, Trade analysis, and A/B testing programmes within the company. It is suitable for UX teams, CRO teams and may also be helpful for Creative and Marketing teams if feedback on campaigns or content is required. It is particularly useful for iterative design processes, as well as research for design projects. Interviews I imagine would be extremely helpful to truly understand user experiences and pain points. I am hoping our business can move towards utilising this feature. It is, I would say, not appropriate to base all decisions on insights gained from the platform as quantitative data is extremely important, but it can help answer the 'why's' of user interactions, and feedback from UserTesting has always been well-received by management and non-UX experts when I have presented it.

For UX research, through UserTesting, we are able to gather insights identifying users needs and exceptions of customers and feeding back to the business which has helped with prioritisation and opportunities.

If you are a larger company with a bigger research and design team, UserTesting can help to make user research a team sport.

Also, in case you don't have your own participant panel, UserTesting can offer a large participant panel that you can share your study with.

It could be however a more costly solution if you are a smaller company or have a smaller UX team.

I love UT for quick usability testing, or to test a survey, for instance. Recruiting is fast and easy as long as your audience is well-represented. It is less useful for niche audiences like some of the ones we recruit for.

UserTesting is well suited for business end user and consumer end user research. I've found it less helpful for recruiting some more niche participant groups such as IT administrators.

I often utilize UserTesting's unmoderated sessions to get quick feedback on designs or prototypes. Sometimes I use it for moderated sessions as well.

UserTesting proves invaluable for obtaining high-quality outcome insights, enabling the capture of users' faces and behaviors as if you were alongside them. However, if your focus shifts towards acquiring larger quantities of data, alternative avenues might be more appropriate. UserTesting prioritizes depth over breadth, excelling in detailed qualitative feedback rather than sheer quantity.

It's the best for A/B tests or tests where you need a broad audience. If you don't need a real niche audience (that you should recruit then rather yourself), then you can rely on UserTesting. It's good because it's so quick, almost instant, it takes about 10 minutes on average before I can start reviewing and documenting sessions.

UserTesting.com is great service for getting quick feedback or something more in-depth. It's well-suited for usability studies and customer interviews, less so for surveys, tree testing or card sorting. Although it has that functionality, it doesn't meet a really delightful experience compared to other tools in that department. Their AI analysis feature is also very handy and works really well.

Any research efforts are met perfectly with this tool. We can do moderated or unmoderated sessions and utilize the transcript for quotes. For live sessions like User Interviews, we also like the option to have a note taker in the call that the participant is unaware off. We believe this created less stress on the participant. As mentioned before, the only problem we are facing as a Canadian company is the pre screening process. We would like to have participants represented from within all our provinces and territories. This causes us to launch multiple tests and then reject/accept a certain province for each one.

This tool offers a variety of functionalities to suite all research phases

UserTesting is the best tool I've worked with for facilitating any research projects - ranging from discovery to evaluative research. I appreciate that it offers a variety of methods, beyond just usability testing. It also includes newer features like card sorting and tree testing. By integrating these features, it negates the need to use another tool such as OptimalWorkshop for which your team may not have a license.

Best suited for task analysis and traditional usability testing

Less appropriate for discovery research, open-ended research and interviewing (even when opting to do a moderated study, the quality really depends on the panel you are looking for)

Best suited for researchers to conduct moderated tests and UX designers to conduct unmoderated tests! Not suited for diary studies!

Most appropriate for:
-Panel recruitment
-Unmoderated usability testing
-Quick tests
-Moderated interviews
-Unmoderated interviews

Less appropriate for:
-Card sorts
-Surveys

UserTesting is great to help designers get validation on their designs to see if they are initiative or user friendly, however it can also determine if a design needs more work if participants have trouble using/understanding it. At my company, we tend to test after ideation and solutioning to help validate which concept to go forward with, but I am hoping in the future we can start testing early on in the ideation phase to help us get enough supporting evidence to determine whether or not we should explore a design further to create a better case with product and tech folks.

UserTesting solves the problem of recruitment. Thanks to UserTesting I can recruit participants from different countries around the world with the characteristics I need. Recruitment is a very difficult process for a small research team and I sometimes still struggle with that; for example, when recruiting minors for research. But not having to do the whole recruitment and reward process is a huge benefit.