The right platform for user testing and research will help you to engage users to ensure you deliver a great user experience (UX). User testing used to be time-consuming, especially if you decided to set up your own research lab.
Luckily, now there are plenty of user testing platforms and tools to observe user behaviour and gather feedback almost instantly, so you can identify issues early and change your design into a more user centred product.
We'll look at some of the most useful user testing and research platforms.
A User Research Platform that aids you and your team in making data backed design decisions. Great for early stage UX decision making, with tools like card sort, tree-jack, questionnaires, first click tests, they have also recently added qualitative research and participant sourcing.
Maze is a fairly new user testing and usability research platform that turns prototypes into actionable insights from real users, bringing confidence to the design process. Offering a lot of the same functionality as usertesting.com Maze takes things one step further with the ability to source participants and conduct moderated user testing sessions, it also enables detailed report generation. My personal pick for the best new kid on the block.
One of the fastest and simplest ways to record users interacting with your website, alongside their responses, unmoderated video user testing sessions. Pick your target audience and assign users a task to perform on your website or app. Your test can be run on a desktop, tablet or a mobile device. In return, UserTesting will record real people giving their thoughts whilst interacting with your website/app, so you can truly understand why users do what they do. You can try out UserTesting for free.
PlaybookUX is another UserTesting.com competitor it offers user testing tool to get video based feedback from your target demographic on websites, prototypes, concepts and more. They do everything from recruiting the right participants, to incentivising them, transcribing the sessions and analysing the videos to extract actionable insights.
Conduct both moderated and unmoderated research in one platform.
UserZoom offers the ability to perform a wide variety of tests and come away with constructive feedback that helps teams better recognise the advantages and gaps that they have in their platforms. UserZoom is great because it gathers unbiased testers and provides a platform to create, host, and record feedback in real time. UserZoom while it can be a little clunky to use, includes a lot of the features of UserTesting.com and OptimalWorkshop, it also includes some features for analytics and surveys.
UsabilityHub is a usability testing platform which allows UI/UX designers to quickly make confident data driven design decisions with remote participants.
It features a couple of exciting and useful proprietary tests, such as five-second test, click test, navigation test, question test and preference test. Besides, it operates as a hub where product owners and testers can come together and collaborate.
Askable is an online platform for managing recruitment, scheduling, communication and incentive distribution for face-to-face UX research and focus groups. User or respondent specifications are submitted though an online form; participants are ready in 72 hours. Markets covered include the UK and Australia.
Is one central database for all your research participant interaction. Track, schedule, pay and manage participants. Somewhat similar to Askable unfortunately currently Ethn.io lacks the ability to source outside participants, you will need an existing website with existing traffic to use their clever intercept tool to source research participants.
Conclusion
If you’d like to improve your skills in User Research, then consider taking the online course User Research – Methods and Best Practices. The course certificate is recognized by industry and it will help you advance your career. Alternatively, there is an entire course on Usability Testing which includes templates you can use in your own projects. Lastly, if you want to brush up on the basics of UX and Usability, you might take the online course on User Experience. Good luck on your learning journey!
