The following quick reference guide on how to test design uses Usability Hub for creating a survey. However, you could achieve the same with an app like Maze or through in-person testing.
1. Create an Account on Usability Hub
If you wish to test a design remotely, you will need to create an online survey. This can be done using a tool like Usability Hub.
Complete the registration process and sign up for a free account. As long as you keep your survey short, you should not need to pay.
2. Create a New Test
Once registered, create a new test and give it a name. Then enter whether you wish to test a desktop or mobile design.
3. Add a Five-Second Test Section
Add a new section to your test entitled “Five Second Test.” In a five-second test, participants are shown a design for a short time before answering questions on what they saw.
First, upload the design you wish to test and select the number of seconds you want to show the design. I recommend between 5 and 8 seconds as that is all the time a user is likely to spend evaluating your site before deciding whether to stay or not.
4. Add Questions to Five-Second Test
Next, create a “long text” question that reads: “In your own words, explain what the page you have just viewed was about.”
Answers to this question will help you understand if the page communicates the site’s purpose and explains what the owner organization does.
Create another “long text” question that reads: “List all of the page elements you remember from the page.“
This question will help you identify whether users spotted critical calls to action and messaging.
5. Add a First-Click Test Section
Add a new section, and this time select “First Click.” Now upload the design you wish to test again.
This test will show participants the design again and ask them to click on the appropriate element in the image to answer the following question: “Where would you click to… [insert your call to action]”.
6. Add Design Questions Section
The final thing to test is whether the design elicits the right feelings for users. For example, you may want the design to feel trustworthy.
To test this, add a “design questions” section. Upload your image and add a series of linear scale questions for each of the words you want to elicit. For example, if you want the design to appear trustworthy, you would create a question that reads: On a scale of 1 to 5, how strongly do you agree with the statement “this website is trustworthy.”
Then mark your linear scale as 1 equals “strongly disagree” and 5 equals “strongly agree”.
Once you have added all of your questions, click “save and continue.” Usability Hub will offer to recruit participants for you for as little as a dollar per user.
If you choose to let Usability Hub handle recruitment, they provide the option for you to specify participants’ demographics, including gender, age, income, and more.
Alternatively Usability Hub will provide you with a link you can share with whomever you like, from emailing it to those on your mailing list or posting it via social media.
8. Review the Results and Adjust as Required
You will want to wait until you have had at least 20 responses before analyzing the results to avoid the results being skewed by outliers — however, the more results, the better. Ideally, you should look for over 100 responses.
To speed up the process of identifying trends in people’s answers to open-ended questions like “explain what the page you have just viewed was about,” make use of Usability Hub’s Word Cloud feature. This word cloud aggregate mentions of specific words, allowing you to see reoccurring themes easily.
If the design fails to perform well on all or some of the questions, you will need to make further revisions before testing again. Otherwise, you can be confident the design is working and have evidence to present to stakeholders.
