Bridging The Gap: How User Testing Workshops Inform UI/UX Design

User testing workshops play a crucial role in our design process here at Uplift. These workshops are designed to  give us an opportunity to test an existing website or UX designs with real users in our target demographic. During this testing we are able to set specific tasks or user flows for our user to complete, recording how they interact with the product and any challenges and feedback they encounter.

So how does this influence UI / UX Design?
Below, we’ve listed the top 5 ways User testing helps to inform our UX Designs: 

1. Identifying User Needs and Expectations
   Through observing users directly interact with our product we are able to see which information and content they are prioritising and what they consider to be important. This helps us to make informed decisions on how to structure information for users to make their path to conversion as friction and pain-free as possible.
   
   

2. Uncovering Pain Points and Barriers to Conversion
   As we observe users interacting with the navigation and user journey, we are able to see any obstacles and difficulties they encounter, highlighting opportunities for improvement in our designs. By setting specific tasks, we are able to see if users are finding difficulty in reaching information and can use this to make informed decisions regarding the site structure and navigation. By uncovering these issues early in the planning stage of a web project we can be agile in our approach, saving time and money by making these changes in design, rather than uncovering these issues in development.
   
   

3. Validating Design Decisions
   During the design process, as designers we make assumptions based on our years of experience working on web design and our knowledge of best practises for UX and industry specific standards. By going through user testing we are able to test these theories and validate our decisions. Helping design to be less subjective and based on data and insight.
   
   

4. Accessibility:
   Workshops give us an opportunity to uncover any accessibility issues with our website and would recommend that participants are sourced with diversity and inclusion in mind. Whilst addressing accessibility problems will benefit users with disabilities, these issues often go hand in hand with general usability issues for websites, so by addressing these, we can improve the website for all users.
   
   

5. Prioritizing Design Changes:
   When reviewing a site and making suggestions, it is important that we consider which changes will make the most commercial impact and priorisise these changes accordingly. By undertaking a user testing workshop we are able to spot the changes that would make the most impact to conversion and prioritise those that will have the biggest impact within our workflow.

   WRITTEN BY

   Rhian Cox

   UX DIRECTOR