UX Research Tips: Why you should avoid coffee shop or guerilla usability tests
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- Опубликовано: 24 сен 2024
- Doing user research and usability tests in coffee shops is NOT a good idea. In this video, I'll explain the many, many reasons why doing guerilla usability tests and user research is not a good use of time for you and your teams.
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Hey! I've been learning a lot from you Sarah, keep it up
Just a point of view, if you catch people who have other things to do, isn't that the regular context and environment? close to jacob's law, users spend their time multitasking, using other websites/apps/activities, it's their daily thing.
Hi Sarah Doody, just wanted to let you know that for an UX designer this video has a quite poor user experience. So in order to improve your UX let me give you some feedback as a user.
A) I did now come here to hear about why you think you are super qualified or to buy anything from you, I came here for a qualified opinion on coffee house testing. It is totally OK to advertise your product after your comment on the topic. In case I found your advice worthwhile and I want to learn more about you an your product... the end of a video is where I want to know it. Or maybe in the information underneath the video... but wait, there it is... hidden beneath the "show more" button. UX-fail.
B) Yes, coffee house testing is not giving you a reliable sample of your target audience and people are busy. But to be honest, your advice ist simply wrong: coffee house testing ist better than not testing at all. At least at a very early stage of testing with a low budget it can help you find major flaws in your design. The technical equipment you can bring is also limited, but one should be able to bring a laptop instead of a paper prototype. So the UX-problem for me is: obviously advicing against coffee house testing in general (because it is not as good as proper user testing in a lab) is not really good advice. It is more or less just click bait. To me, that is a bad experience, because I wasted my precious time on unqualified content.
Btw., I do not know about NYC but where I come from we have book stores with integrated coffee shops - there you can find many relaxed people that at least match your demographics. And do not forget to bring a laptop with tracking software... obviously.
Thanks for your feedback. I intentionally give a short intro about myself at the beginning of each video in order to let people know who I am and what I do. I keep it short and get to the content quickly and of course, you could also skip ahead.
I can see your point about coffee shop testing, but I just don't understand why you would approach strangers when you can use online recruiting tools such as Respondent, UserTesting, etc and quickly connect to people who meet the criteria of your potential users.
Sure, coffee shop testing is better than no testing, but to me it seems like a bit of a lazy route. With a bit more effort you could be connecting with people who likely fit your target customer / audience.
Fair enough. Those plattforms give you the chance to get your target audience just right. That can not be underestimated, especially when you are at an advanced stage of your testing routine.
But then again, you can not observe the mimcial reactions of the test users and inquire further from there. We use Screenium for the coffee house testing, it captures the camera and screen movement of the test-device. As far as I know, there is no camera capture tracking with Respondent or UserTesting. Plus especially for other languages than english they do not really have the biggest communities.
All I am trying to say is: if you are at an early stage, especially outside the US and manage to find a suitable coffee house it is an option to detect the worst issues with your product at a very low cost. One day of work and at most 100$ for coffee vouchers. Therefor it does have a place in my testing routines. Once you go beyond that stage and need more specific feedback, I do agree that you will no longer get valuable insights.
Fair comments and insight. Of course there is a case for most things and I am sure there is a case for holding usability studies at a cafe for more than finding coffee lovers (btw they could be tea, cocoa lovers or felt obligated to buy coffee to get the free wifi etc.) Complete strangers that you don't know the specific demographic of might be an advantage when you are looking for a broad cross section of people outside your specific audience to find how you can broaden your customers by acquiring new ones. For example you may not even know that 70% of random people outside your researched and targeted user base want to use your product of service but haven't in the past because of X and Y. Now you know how to onboard new users and scale your product to be more inclusive.
Also, if the guerilla usability study is handled sensitively and the conductor is asking strategic questions while observing correctly, they will know what group the participant falls under in a general sense pretty quickly.
Also, not being nasty but I felt like I was being yelled at and talked to like an idiot. There must be a less abrasive manner to get your points across? Maybe in NYC that's normal I guess. LOL
What if you go to where you know those users are? For example the target self checkout, You go to a target store and do user interviews with customers who have used the self checkout before.
This was super insightful! I kept noticing people using guerilla testing in their portfolios, and I was concerned that maybe I was missing something. Great insights. Thank you.
Hey Sarah, I totally hear what you're saying, but what are the alternatives? Where do you go to get targeted research participants?
Hey, Sarah! I was willing to do that kind of research, but you made me realize it's not accurate, it's actually nonsensical.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
You're amazing! Love you and your hair! ha ha ha. Best wishes to you!
Great Info Sarah, thank you.....Why you should avoid coffee shop or guerilla usabiilty tests | Sarah Doody, UX Designer...in the title usability spelling needs to corrected. :)
Thanks! Fixed.
Yeah you probably won't find your target audience at a coffee shop. You won't test your value proposition in a guerrilla test but you can test general usability. Sometimes you just need a quick validation to keep working an interating. Also moderated tests are great but they're time consuming and recruiting users is a big pain, therefore they're not worth doing every single time. You don't really need to print anything out. Just get a phone with the prototype and give it to people. Not a big deal. Use guerrilla when you want something quick and general, use moderated tests when you want to get a deeper understanding of how your target users interact with the product. I don't think telling everyone to avoid guerilla testing is good advice quite the opposite. Choose depending on what your'e looking for
Why not spend the extra bit of time to find people who are closer to your target user though?
Please amplify the audio.... Best resources insights though..
seems you're having bad experience from this video though.