Our workWhy usPricing
Summit

Ignite: How to Spark Creativity and Build Resilience

Join us for 3+ hours of free content with 5 sessions on sparking creativity and building resilience, featuring 12+ industry experts from Headspace, Webflow, Zapier, Reddit, Coursera, Clari, DirecTV, MasterControl, Matterport, and more.
View event
Gather & Grow

Your Opinion About Your Brand Doesn’t Matter

Watch our interactive session on how to position, build and experiment your way to a brand that resonates with your audience!
View event
Gather & Grow

Zero-click Content | On-Demand Recording

Watch the full session with Amanda Natividad about content quality, social listening, content trends in 2023, and how to leverage zero-click content!
View event
Events & Summits

Explore all the content inside Events & Summits!

See all
BlogCommunityBook a demoSign in

How to do Remote User Testing

Team Superside
Team Superside5 min read
How to do Remote User Testing - Superside

User testing is an essential step in the product design process that helps companies enhance the user experience, check for errors and optimize final product success. And while user testing and research is far from a foreign concept, remote user testing is slightly more modern.

With 66% of companies allowing remote work and 16% fully remote, remote user testing has become a necessity for brands to understand user interactions with their product across the globe. As more companies continue migrating to the remote workforce, remote user testing will only increase in popularity compared to more traditional in-person product testing.

The Evolution of User Testing

Authors Nate Bolt and Tony Tulathimutte wrote in Remote Research, “In-person lab research used to be the only game in town, and as with most industry practices, its procedures were developed, refined, and standardized, and then became entrenched in the corporate R&D product development cycle.” Now, the game has changed.

While both remote user testing and in-person testing are directed toward a common goal, different rules and procedures apply. It’s critical that teams understand and apply these practices to get the most out of their product development and to enhance their product’s chance of success. Here are five tips on how to best conduct remote user testing: [1] [2]

The Future of DesignOps eBook

Facebook, Airbnb and Pinterest all have DesignOps teams to efficiently manage the creative process, but it’s not a one-size fits all solution. Learn about this emerging role in our eBook!

Download the eBook

5 Tips to Conduct Remote User Testing

1. Advanced preparation

Advanced preparation goes a long way, and that is certainly true when it comes to remote user testing. The first step of any testing is to define your team’s goals, as well as who your target group is. Ask yourself the who, when and how. Who do you plan to test? When do you plan to conduct the testing? And what type of testing will you do?

Don’t go into a testing blindly. Establish what the goal is among your team members so you know what to look for from the start. Once you clearly define the goal and understand the essential questions driving this test, you can begin.

2. Recruit participants

Remote user testing obviously requires participants. One benefit of conducting user testing remotely is that it is easier to find participants from all corners of the globe. Recruit participants early in the product development process to catch any issues and gather important feedback as soon as possible. This will help the overall product development process run smoother as opposed to waiting until the final product launch before observing any user interaction.

Whether it be via social media platforms, friends or colleagues, seek out participants who you feel best fit the type of users you need to test. Establish a line of communication between your team and the users so that they can reach out to you with feedback and you can ask them questions throughout the process.

3. Write the task prompt

Writing is an integral part of the remote user testing process. It is needed to design the tasks and questions and, therefore, must be clear and concise to avoid participant confusion. To ensure clarity, consider asking one of your colleagues to review the test script beforehand.

Structure-wise, you can divide your questions into three parts: Contextual questions, scenarios and tasks, and questions about the overall experience. The contextual questions will help you get to know your remote users and make them feel more comfortable. The scenario and task questions create a hypothetical situation for your users. And the overall experience questions will provide your team with feedback on the users’ feelings and conclusions regarding the entire test and product.

4. Take it for a test drive

It’s important to run the test before revealing it to your users. In contrast to in-person testing, remote testing essentially relies completely on technology. And technology can occasionally experience unexpected kinks and malfunctions. To help avoid running into these technical errors during the actual test, have your team and colleagues take it first.

Given that no one from your team will be with your participants during the test to assist, running a pilot test is especially critical for remote user testing. Amy Schade from the Nielsen Norman Group wrote, “Pilot testing (a session or two before the real test) helps fine-tune usability studies, leading to more reliable results.” Run a pilot test to reduce the chance of any issues or errors occurring during the actual test and to optimize overall test results.

5. Observe and analyze

The most important part of the remote user testing is what you and your team learn from it. Observe and analyze the test results and hone in on important feedback. Figure out where your product needs changed and what worked and didn’t work for your users.

Choose an effective method of recording and presenting your data. Regardless of how your team opts to present the findings, it’s important to have an overall view of your test results.

Test, Analyze, Repeat…

Remote user testing boasts incredible benefits for companies who wish to test their product with users based around the globe. It allows brands to enhance their overall product development, as well as save on precious time and resources.

Be sure to conduct regular remote user tests throughout product development to eliminate uncertainty. Remote user testing will give your team the upper hand and magnify your company’s overall success.

Reference:

[1] https://www.invisionapp.com/inside-design/6-tips-for-remote-user-testing/
[2] https://uxdesign.cc/how-to-run-a-remote-usability-testing-4350c7786f20
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/pilot-testing/
https://thoughtbot.com/blog/practical-guide-to-user-testinghttps://www.jotform.com/blog/how-to-remote-user-test/

Published: Nov 13, 2019
Team Superside
Written by
Team Superside
Team Superside is comprised of writers from all over the globe. We love making stuff, telling stories and sharing fun, nerdy ideas with the world.

Join our community of 15,000 strong and receive the best design and marketing content, biweekly

No charge. Unsubscribe anytime

Continue reading

Hassle-free design starts here

Superside is an always-on design company that makes design frictionless and hassle-free for marketing, sales, creative and product design teams. This means top-quality designs at lightning-fast speeds, improved velocity and go-to-market and completely secure and confidential file sharing and collaboration.

In this one-on-one live demo, you’ll see:
- How Superside works
- A first look at the Superside platform
- The most suitable subscription plan for you

Get ready to join 450+ scale-ups and enterprise teams doing good design at scale with Superside’s dedicated team model.
Ready to get started?Book a demo now

Book a call with us

Loading...
We need your phone number for the demo. We'll never use it for any other purposes.
Superside is a revolutionary way for businesses to get good design done at scale.Trusted by 450+ ambitious companies, Superside makes design hassle-free for marketing and creative teams. By combining the top 1% of creative talent from around the world with purpose-built technology and the rigor of design ops, Superside helps ambitious brands grow faster. Since inception, Superside has been a fully remote company, with more than 700 team members working across 57 countries and 13 timezones.
© 2023 Superside. All rights reserved.