Usability Testing in 4 Simplified Steps

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Usability Testing in 4 Simplified Steps

[ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS]

Unlike scientific experiments, usability testing doesn’t need to be a fully-fledged project. Whether you’re testing for work or doing projects for your portfolio, here are some tips for a free, remote usability test:

Start with a clear goal - what is the problem you are solving? Make sure that it is not too open-ended but also, not too specific that it would only target certain individuals.
Recruit participants - while it’s nice to have a large pool of data to look at, 3 to 5 people who represent your target audience is a good number to start with.
Perform the test - this is my favorite part! Write a script to prevent inconsistencies and welcome your participants.
Analyze the results - review your notes and recordings to find key behaviors and comments. If you look for patterns and rank issues found, this will help determine what next steps look like.

Riding the edge (case) with Lyft e-scooters

[INSTAGRAM POST]

Imagine borrowing a Lyft e-scooter, riding it to your destination, and then realizing you don’t know how to “return” it. Uh oh! Let’s see how this mini UX fiasco could have been avoided.

Adobe MAX—The Creativity Conference, October 20–22

[UPCOMING EVENT]

Adobe’s FREE 3-day virtual event with over 350 sessions to inspire designers and creators from all sorts of varying backgrounds and interests.

Color Controversy

[DESIGN TOOL]

Do you remember “The Dress” from 2015? Is it blue and black or is it white and gold? Colors can look different to people for a variety of reasons - screen settings, brightness, contrast, etc. This activity lets you judge and compare results among other users.

Sobering Realities for UX Juniors

[DESIGN PODCAST]

Debbie Levitt from Delta CX chats with special guest, Sam Harper, about his popular Medium article, “10 sobering realities every brand-new UX designer needs to accept”. The conversation and article are great for those entering the UXD industry, especially right now with a very saturated market of bootcamp graduates and limited operating companies with open positions.

Product Thinking is Problem Solving

[ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS]

I grabbed some EarPods as I was getting ready to hop onto a Zoom meeting. To my annoyance, I had in my hands a pair of earpods with a lightning connector that only connected to my headphone jack-less iPhone X.

According to Apple, they removed headphone jacks from their phones in effort to make the port waterproof. While that did present users with a happy surprise of a fully-functioning phone despite dropping it in water, there’s some disappointment with the need to invest in other audio accessories.

If product thinking enables designers to build better products and solve the problem first… What was Apple’s problem they were solving and did they define the product from a UX perspective?

“Design isn’t finished until somebody is using it.”

- Brenda Laurel, PhD, Independent Scholar
[UX QUOTE]

Life in a Day Trailer

[WATCH THIS]

I was looking for some inspiration for my design work when I came across Life in a Day. This crowdsourced documentary film takes video clips from over 80,000 clips submitted from YouTube to showcase events happening around the world in a single day. It’s captivating because there are stories many of us can identify with, and others we hope never to. It’s like a gentle reminder that empathy drives a user experience.

Non-Designer’s Design Book

[BOOK RECO]

Whether you love design or could use more pointers, this book is a handy resource to appreciate design with properly formatted text and graphics. The visual comparison of before and after images demonstrate what works and why, not just “it looks pretty”.

allyresources

[DESIGN TOOL]

Hannah Milan is the creator behind this accessibility tools and resources - bookmark it, reference it, use it! Accessibility should always be a part of your design process, not an afterthought.

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💼 REMOTE UX JOBS 💻

Product Designer

Reflektive is a real-time performance management and employee engagement solutions for HR leaders and their agile organizations.
Requirements: 3-5 years experience shipping products on Product Design teams. Experience with Saas or complete enterprise applications preferred; expert experience with creation, prototyping, motion, and file management tool sets such as Sketch, Abstract, Zeplin, InVision, Principle, etc.
#smallteam #unicornpotential #friendlycoworkers

Product Designer

Truepic is a photo and video verification platform.
Requirements: 3+ years of hands-on experience in product design and/or UX/UI design using Figma and/orSketch’ experience working with multidisciplinary teams; attention to detail with engineering implementation, and the ability to integrate into engineering and QA processes to ensure high-quality execution
#startup #highpaying #smallteam

Product Designer

Chili Piper is a scheduling product that helps businesses help their buyers.
Requirements: has experience using Sketch (experience with Abstract is a plus); very passionate about small details in a product; loves to be challenged.
#greatperks #smallteam #unicornpotential

Product Designer

Shogun supports various e-commerce brands.
Requirements: portfolio to showcase product design work in a similar industry; comfortable exploring data and interpreting results’ experience designing on a remote team
#startup #flexible #unicornpotential

UX Designer

Oddball is a digital agency providing support to federal clients.
Requirements: understanding of and ability to design 508 compliant solutions; experience working in Agile development environments; capable of taking direction from senior leadership and translating into concrete next steps and actions
#greatperks #smallteam

Remote Senior UX Positions

Senior Product Designer

LaunchNotes is a suite of tools for communicating product changes internally with companies and externally with customers.
Requirements: 5+ years of experience, 2+ years in a senior role; expertise with design tools like Figma/Sketch, InVision, Illustrator; experience working remotely with cross functioning teams
#startup #smallteam #flexible

Senior Designer

Basecamp is a real-time communication tool that helps teams stay on the same page.
Requirements: experience building interface for email exporting tech; accessibility know to improve color contrast of buttons in dark mode; prototyping across screens
#highpaying #bigcompany #greatperks

Senior UX/UI Designer

Salesmsg is a two-way SMS and MMS business texting software that makes it easy to have real-time text message conversations at scale.
Requirements: mentor UX designers on the team as part of a leadership and coaching role; design and conduct A/B and multivariate tests and optimize the overall web experience to maximize CTR and conversion rates
#startup #smallteam #leadershipopportunity

👨‍💼 LET ME HELP YOU LAND THAT FIRST UX JOB 👩‍💼

The UX Portfolio Course is now updated with new content to help you get to the finish line of portfolio work.
The UX Fundamentals Course helps you learn the basics of user experience in new way: learn the business skills behind UX and the mechanics of doing it.
Master the UX Interview teaches you the ins-and-outs of the interview game that has helped students land offers at Microsoft, Google and hot startups.

I also offer 1-on-1 UX career coaching. 90% of the designers I mentor make dramatic career transitions like landing their first UX job or switching to UX from a totally unrelated career.

Not ready to invest in training? Head on over to the UX Facebook Group to connect with thousands of other designers and potential mentors.

Thanks for reading 😊 This is a user experience newsletter from UX Beginner. A content strategist + UX designer named Oz runs this lil blog for fun, from sunny Los Angeles.

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