User Testing

Creating Better Experiences Through Real Feedback

You can spend months designing the perfect interface, building out beautiful interactions, and writing the most carefully considered content—but until you test it with real users, you’re working with assumptions. User testing is where design meets reality. It’s the process that bridges the gap between what we think will work and what actually works for the people we’re building for.

At its core, user testing is about observation. It’s about watching someone try to accomplish a task and learning from what works, what fails, and what surprises you. In those moments, you gain more insight than any internal meeting or brainstorming session could ever provide. It’s not about proving a design right—it’s about making the experience better.

Understanding What to Test

The value of user testing is directly tied to knowing what to test. In most projects, this includes the core navigation of the product—how people move through your experience, how they find what they need, and whether the structure makes sense to them. If a user can’t locate a main feature or key page, it doesn’t matter how elegant your typography is or how well the backend was engineered.

Beyond navigation, testing should focus on task completion. This is where you discover whether users can do the things your platform is designed to help them do. That might mean checking out, signing up, completing a form, or simply browsing. If people struggle with these basic tasks, it’s not a user problem—it’s a design problem.

Clarity is another important area. Are your headlines communicating the right message? Does your product page explain its value well enough? User testing often uncovers where your words fall short or your assumptions about user knowledge miss the mark.

Design elements themselves—the buttons, icons, layouts, and visual patterns—also deserve testing. You may think your call-to-action is prominent, but testing might show that users skip right over it. Similarly, you may think your design system is intuitive, but users may interpret elements differently than expected.

You should also test what happens when things go wrong. Error states are rarely the focus in design presentations, but they matter deeply to the user. When someone forgets a password or enters the wrong info in a form, what happens next? Do they get clear instructions? Do they hit a wall? User testing can expose these vulnerable moments before they turn into lost conversions.

And finally, don’t forget performance across screens and accessibility. Responsive behavior and inclusive design are no longer optional. Testing should reveal whether your product works for everyone, not just the people on the latest device with perfect vision.

Knowing When to Test

Too often, testing is treated like the final exam—something you do after everything’s been built. But by that point, change is expensive, and resistance to feedback is high. The real power of testing comes when it’s woven into the entire process, not reserved for the end.

In the early stages of a project, you can test ideas. Even before a single screen is designed, it’s valuable to understand user needs, behaviors, and priorities. Methods like interviews, surveys, and card sorting can uncover mental models that inform how you structure information and features.

As your team begins building prototypes, testing becomes about flow. Can users move from point A to point B without hesitation? Are you leading them in the right direction? Mid-stage testing catches usability issues early—before they’re baked into development.

Toward the end of the process, testing helps polish the experience. You’re no longer validating the idea—you’re refining how it feels. This is when beta testing and accessibility checks come into play. It’s also a time to measure how the product performs in real-world use across browsers, devices, and different user contexts.

But testing doesn’t stop at launch. Post-launch testing is where you see what users actually do—not just what they saythey’ll do. Tools like heatmaps and session recordings let you observe patterns at scale. Surveys and feedback forms let users voice what they love or where they hit walls. This ongoing evaluation is crucial for continuous improvement.

Choosing the Right Methods

There’s no single way to conduct a user test. The method you choose depends on your goals, your timeline, and the fidelity of what you’re testing.

Moderated usability testing is often the most informative. You sit with the user—either in person or remotely—and watch them attempt key tasks while thinking aloud. You learn not just what they do, but how they feel. It’s ideal for gathering deep, qualitative insight, especially when testing complex flows or new features.

Unmoderated testing, on the other hand, happens without a facilitator. Users follow a set of tasks on their own, typically recorded via screen capture. It’s faster, cheaper, and often more scalable, though you lose the nuance of live feedback.

Some tests are designed to isolate specific interactions. First-click tests evaluate where users instinctively go to perform a task. A/B tests compare two variations of a design to see which performs better. Session recordings and heatmaps provide a zoomed-out view of user behavior at scale, while eye tracking can offer micro-level data on attention and scanning patterns.

Surveys, polls, and short-form feedback tools are also valuable. While they don’t replace behavioral testing, they provide a layer of subjective response—emotions, expectations, frustrations—that complement the more observational data.

How to Run a Productive Test

Even a basic user test can be powerful if done with intention. Here’s a general framework to guide the process:

1. Start with clear goals. Know what you’re trying to learn. Are you validating a layout? Gauging task flow? Testing messaging clarity?

2. Recruit participants who represent your actual users. Avoid relying solely on team members or peers who already understand the product.

3. Pick the right method for the fidelity of your design and the resources available.

4. Design realistic tasks. Ask participants to perform actions that mirror real-world use, not abstract instructions.

5. Observe without interfering. Let users work through the product naturally. Your job is to watch, not lead.

6. Capture everything. Record sessions when possible so you can go back and analyze behavior in detail.

7. Ask follow-up questions. After each task, prompt users to explain their thought process. This often reveals why they got stuck—or why something worked beautifully.

Turning Insights into Action

The biggest mistake teams make is collecting feedback without acting on it. Testing is only useful if it leads to change. The feedback you gather should translate directly into decisions—what to fix, what to refine, and what to leave alone.

Some problems will be obvious and urgent: users can’t find the menu, they miss the checkout button, or they abandon a task midway. Others may be more subtle, like tone mismatches or unclear visual hierarchy. Group issues by severity and impact. Fix the critical barriers first, then work your way through enhancements.

Sometimes, user feedback will also reveal opportunities—not just problems. People might express a desire for a feature you hadn’t considered or show enthusiasm for a part of the experience you didn’t think was that significant. These moments can shape future roadmaps.

Everything you learn should feed back into the iterative design cycle. User testing isn’t a box you check. It’s a continuous practice. Each round of testing makes the experience better, tighter, and more attuned to the people you serve.

User Testing Tools of the Trade

These tools help gather both qualitative and quantitative insights throughout different testing phases:

• Maze – Remote, unmoderated testing for prototypes and live products; ideal for rapid, scalable feedback.

• UserTesting – Offers moderated and unmoderated tests with a large participant pool; includes video recordings and voice feedback.

• Hotjar – Heatmaps, session recordings, and user surveys that provide behavioral insights post-launch.

• Optimal Workshop – Great for early-stage testing like card sorting, tree testing, and first-click analysis.

• Lookback – Facilitates live moderated tests with session recording, user voice, and webcam input.

• PlaybookUX – Offers participant recruitment, video-based user testing, and automatic transcription.

• UsabilityHub – A lightweight tool for first-click tests, preference tests, and design surveys.

• UserZoom – Enterprise-level platform with advanced usability research capabilities across large teams.

• Dovetail – Centralizes research data, tagging, and analysis for identifying key patterns and insights.

• FigJam or Miro – Useful for collaborative testing prep, note-taking, and mapping user journeys during or after sessions.

For more moderated, in-depth user insights, especially during early research phases or before major redesigns, focus groups can be a powerful method—explore our full guide on how to run them effectively here.

A Better Way to Build

User testing makes experiences more human. It brings empathy into the process and gives teams permission to be wrong—early, often, and safely. Rather than assuming what works, you uncover what actually works. That shift in mindset creates not only more usable products, but also more trustworthy ones.

Design isn’t just about vision—it’s about responsiveness. When you test with users, you’re not just building things that look good. You’re building things that feel right. And in the end, that’s what great experiences are made of.