[GET CERTIFIED IN UX]<\/p>\n Take our Professional Diploma in UX Design course<\/span>\n <\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n Doing usability testing with the people you work with might seem like the easiest option but it\u2019s generally going to produce the worst data.<\/p>\n Why? The people who work in your company, even if they\u2019re not working directly on the product team, know an awful lot about the business model and the industry that you work in. They have too much information (and therefore bias) in their head to be able to step out of their shoes and into the shoes of a genuine user.<\/p>\n Say you work for an insurance company and are developing a website for your customers. \u00a0If you carry out usability testing with your colleagues, they are going to be experts on insurance whereas most insurance customers know an awful lot less about it. Insurance experts aren\u2019t your target customers so it doesn\u2019t make any sense to use them in your research.<\/p>\n And, aside from the bias issue, most employees won\u2019t feel comfortable being critical of a product that their colleagues have worked on. They won\u2019t want to cause offence so they won\u2019t end up giving honest feedback (for more on the drawbacks of using colleagues, check out this post from Nielsen Norman Group<\/a>).<\/p>\n Sometimes the question comes up – is it better to test with colleagues than to do no testing at all? We definitely say it\u2019s better to have no data than wildly misleading data that\u2019s going to bring you down the wrong path. And, actually, it\u2019s not an either\/or scenario – there are other users you can use.<\/p>\n This is a slightly better option. You can send an email out to say you\u2019re conducting a usability test on such a date and does anyone have friends or family who fit the criteria.<\/p>\n But friends and family aren\u2019t complete outsiders to the company – they obviously know at least one person working there and therefore may have more insider knowledge of the company than a typical user would. This will likely influence what they bring to the table during the testing.<\/p>\n You\u2019ll also need to filter if your friends and family represent the target users – they may be suitable for testing mass market B2C products but aren\u2019t a good match for B2B products which have a more specific user.<\/p>\n Recruiting friends and family is definitely better than using your colleagues. But it\u2019s still not the best source of users, as explained in this Medium<\/a> article by Michael Margolis (UX Research Partner at GV).<\/p>\n \u201cFinding real target customers is a little more work than showing the latest thing to friends and family,\u201d he says. \u201cBut in the end, your research will be a lot more useful. So take the extra time and do it right.\u201d<\/p>\n You would imagine that companies feel totally at ease talking to their customers. But often there are barriers – political barriers and geographical barriers – that stop companies from engaging with their customer base.<\/p>\n One political barrier is a fear of where the conversation might go and this comes from a misunderstanding of what UX research actually is.<\/p>\n \u201cThe sales guys might say, \u2018No, you\u2019re not talking to the customers\u2019,\u201d says Colman Walsh, founder of the UX Design Institute<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThey fear the product team is going to ask customers what they want and they\u2019re going to say, \u2018This, this and this\u2019. The sales team – or whomever – is then worried that commitments have been made that can\u2019t be met.<\/p>\n \u201cBut that\u2019s not what UX research is about – it isn\u2019t asking customers what they want, it\u2019s understanding what they need and understanding what their problems are.\u201d<\/p>\n If you work in a B2C environment (say, for instance, you\u2019re a mobile phone network or operate in the travel sector), you\u2019re going to have a lot of existing customers you can approach.<\/p>\n And there\u2019s a lot of people who could be potential customers – practically everyone has a mobile phone or goes on holidays after all – so you\u2019ve no excuse for not finding customers.<\/p>\n If you work in a B2B company, it may be a little trickier to get to speak to your customers as they\u2019re not a mass market audience. If you need to talk to a network engineer or a physiotherapist, for example, you\u2019re looking to speak to a very specific user.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re hoping to use your customer database to find users, your sales or account managers might act as gatekeepers to this information (going back to the political barrier).<\/p>\n How do you get around this? Be clear with your stakeholders – basically whoever controls access to customers – that you won\u2019t be asking your customers for a wish list of what they want or giving them any commitments.<\/p>\n You may also need to reinforce the importance of usability testing to your stakeholders – that design decisions should always be based on user research and that it will ultimately lead to a better product.<\/p>\n But if your powers of persuasion don\u2019t work their magic, you can always use a proxy for your customer….<\/p>\n [GET CERTIFIED IN UI DESIGN]<\/p>\n Take our Professional Certificate in UI Design course<\/span>\n <\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n Using a proxy in place of a customer can help you get around any political barriers to talking to actual customers. It can also be beneficial if there\u2019s a geographical barrier to carrying out testing with your customers – if they\u2019re based in another country and it would be too expensive to carry out testing in person with them.<\/p>\n \u201cIn a previous role, we did usability testing with a company in the Netherlands who make mixers for laboratories,\u201d says Colman. \u201cThey wanted to build a better interface for the product but all of their customers were outside of Europe – in the US, China or Australia – which made it difficult and expensive to organise testing with them. And there was also resistance from the sales team to interview customers.<\/p>\n \u201cSo we looked at the local area where the company was based. There were lots of technicians working in labs and using mixers. In fact, there was a big technical university attached to the business park where the company was based. So there was a slew of proxies nearby that we were able to use for usability testing.<\/p>\n \u201cThey might not actually be your customers, they might not be your end users but they\u2019re representative of them. They have the same goals, the same behaviours.\u201d<\/p>\n Unless you\u2019ve ever tried to schedule participants for usability test sessions, you probably underestimate the level of effort involved. It can become almost a full time job: emailing, calling, scheduling, rearranging and so on.<\/p>\n You might have to contact 50 customers in order to get five people who are willing and\/or available to come along to the test. It is a lot of admin and not the best use of your time.<\/p>\n There’s a smarter way to do this – outsourcing it to a specialist research recruiter.<\/p>\n Research recruiters typically find participants for market research purposes (e.g. focus groups) but they will also be able to recruit participants for usability tests. Every country and city in the world where market research is conducted will have recruitment agencies who specialise in finding the right participants.<\/p>\n To give you a flavour of what you\u2019re looking for, here are a few well known companies in Ireland, the UK, the US and the Netherlands:<\/p>\n There is a cost involved in using recruiters (roughly \u20ac100 for each person recruited in Ireland) but it represents good value for money as opposed to pursuing the do-it-yourself route.<\/p>\n You should use a recruitment screener to give the agency guidance as to who you need for your sessions, in order to make sure that participants represent your target users. So if you\u2019re testing an airline website, it\u2019s people who have recently booked a flight. If you make network diagnostic software, it\u2019s network engineers. For high-end fitness trackers, it\u2019s athletes.<\/p>\nColleagues<\/h2>\n
Friends and family<\/h2>\n
Customers<\/h2>\n
![\"Deal-shaking-hands\"](\"https:\/\/www.uxdesigninstitute.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Pic-2-customer-300x217.png\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\nTalking to customers – B2C company<\/h2>\n
Talking to customers – B2B company<\/h2>\n
Customer proxies<\/h2>\n
![\"Map\"](\"https:\/\/blog.uxdesigninstitute.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Pic-3-geography.png\" "\\"\\"")
<\/p>\nSpecialist research recruitment agencies<\/h2>\n
\n
Recruitment screener<\/h2>\n