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Hacker's guide to user testing.

Hacker's guide to user testing.

We all know how valuable it is to get feedback from real users on the websites and apps we build. We can often waste days if not weeks of development time when we don't know what our users really care about.

Unfortunately we tend to not do it because it's hard to do, takes time and can be really expensive. Isn't it also someone else's job?

From my experience going from a big agency to small startup, I'll show you how to do it quickly, cheaply and also explain why it will make you a better developer.

Tom Alterman

January 29, 2015
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Transcript

  1. Why people don’t do it • “Takes too long” •

    “Too expensive” • “Too difficult”
  2. Hard lesson learnt • Took a week to build •

    Horrible hacky code • Added ~1 sec to page load
  3. The process 1. Recruit participants 2. Plan & run the

    sessions 3. Analyse the findings
  4. Reach out to the target audience • Your site •

    Emails • Social media / forums • Gumtree / Craigslist
  5. 3-5 users per test 5 users will help you find

    over 80% of the usability issues* *http://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-many-test-users/
  6. At the end of each session Write a quick list

    of the most important things you noticed