At Loop11 we like to practice dog fooding.

Recently we ran two usability studies to gain comparative benchmarking data on an existing design and then comparing that to a new one.

Since the new design was yet to be released, we created two InVision prototypes, one for each design. We then created 4 tasks and 5 questions and generated two identical studies, one for each prototype.

Next, we set about running 100 participants though the prototypes, 50 on each, to see if our new design had created a better overall experience for participants.

Disappointment Meets Confusion

An hour after launch we had the results back from the two studies so I set about consuming the reports. It didn’t take me long to see that the average page views per task were higher for our new design.

As I’m sure many of you can attest, it hurts a little when something you’ve put a lot of effort into and believe is better proves to be worse. But in the interest of creating a better piece of software, I swallowed my pride and took a look at some of the highest page count participants to see how we’d failed.

I focussed in on two participants who were large outliers, both having recorded roughly 3 times the amount of page views than their next nearest participant. These two participants alone were enough to elevate the page count averages to the point where the new design was out performed by the old design.

As I watched the videos of these two participants I only became more confused. (more…)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has long been viewed as one of the most important factors in determining the success of online companies and their websites. Leading tools, such as MOZ, and their suite of products, would facilitate SEO professionals diving into the depths of search engine results and pulling out valuable nuggets of SEO gold that could then be applied to their website in order to climb up the search rankings.

Traditionally SEO work has involved looking at large sets of in-personal data, usually mined from Google Analytics and/or it’s general rankings. The problem – often this information lacks color. You can see the ‘what’ but it’s not always clear why the users are thinking and acting like they are.

SEFUS… ah … gazoontite?

This is where Search Engine Findability User Studies (SEFUS) come in and save the day. (more…)

Code is a developer’s problem… right? Mmmm, maybe, but when it goes wrong it can sure derail your user testing in a hurry.

There is one inconspicuous line of code that can ruin your UX testing and, as UX professional, it’s your responsibility, not your developer’s, to get right.

What am I referring to? (more…)

“What a waste of time” the researcher says as they throw their hands in the air.

This scene is more common than we, as UX professionals, would like to admit. One of the biggest frustrations for user researchers revolves around participants either not turning up, or dropping out mid-way through a remote user testing session.

We often get support tickets, at Loop11, from customers desperate to improve their completion rates and looking for tips to ensure they are as efficient as possible.

In response to this we decided to dig into the details and see if we could pull out any commonalities consistently associated with high performing tests with low dropout rates.

For this task we pulled the most recent 1,000 user tests which had at least 10 participants complete the study. We then cut the data every which way we could think of to draw out tidbits that will help you run better user tests.

As a point of reference, in these 1,000 usability tests the average completion rate was 59% and the median was 63%. The average number of participants in a study was 103 and the median was 31. Last but not least, the average duration that a participant would take to complete a user test was 23 minutes.

So without further ado, here are the top 3 tips for ensuring the majority of participants who begin your testing process successfully finish, giving you those valuable insights. (more…)

If you are reading this then you’ve probably just been given the job of improving a website, app, product, or maybe even a real-world service. Like with most things that are new, you aren’t sure where to start and might be a little overwhelmed with the amount of information Google is throwing back at your search queries.

What I hope to achieve in this article is give you the bare basics of user testing so that you can move forward and get a little experience of your own, get some positive results and then move deeper into the world of UX.

The first thing you need to do is: (more…)

During a recent podcast with the VP Head of Design at SAP, Janaki Kumar, she discussed the benefit of using games to build engagement amongst workshop participants. Following on from this, we wanted to hear from you. What games had you played, or use, and why are they great?
We ran a competition and chose our favorite submissions. Below are the games that won and we thank all of you who sent in game ideas. You are a playful lot!

(more…)

Note: there is an update relating to InVision Studio at the bottom of this article. You can also view InVision’s help article on finding you public share link.

If you design digital products like websites or apps then you will be well aware of the powerhouse prototyping tool InVision. They’ve been taking the design world by storm since founded in 2011.

Designing prototypes is an important part of any designer’s workflow, as such, InVision has become an integral tool within product teams. However, designing the prototype is only half the job, the second part is testing the design with users and seeing if what you’ve designed works.

Like a number of prototyping tools on the market, InVision has some usability testing baked in. It predominantly revolves around getting videos of users while they test a prototype on their iPhone 6 or above.

These videos of course are valuable, however, there is so much more that can be done with user testing and for these situations a tool like Loop¹¹ is perfect.

The good news is, using Loop¹¹ to test your InVision prototypes couldn’t be easier. Below we detail the steps.

(more…)

Justinmind, a fantastic prototyping tool for websites and apps, has just released a new integration with Loop¹¹ which makes testing your design a breeze.

Below we lay out the simple steps. In order to follow this tutorial, you will need both a Justinmind account and a Loop¹¹ account. Both offer free trials. (more…)