Hey Tri, thanks so much!
1. How do you decide who is the participants for your research flows?
We choose participants based on what kind of audience we’re focusing on for our project. For example, on the seller side, we might weigh certain factors: how long has their shop been open? Have they had a sale? Are they also an active buyer? Where are they located? How many sales do they have per year? What types of items do they sell? What features do they have turned on?
Sometimes we want an average sampling of sellers from across the board. Other times we might want to focus on experienced sellers who do a certain number of sales per year. Our research team then recruits participants based on this criteria.
2. How many participants needed when you conduct concept validation or usability testing?
Usually for each round of usability testing, we’ll talk to 8-12 people over the course of two days. Depending on the project, we might do up to 10 rounds of usability testing every few weeks throughout the project.
3. When you do a series of research with users, do you do it with the same participants?
When we’re doing usability testing, we don’t use the same participants for the same project twice to get the most diverse feedback possible. One of the benefits of prototype groups, though, is that we’re able to stay in contact with people over the course of the project. This allows us to follow up with them about questions they had or bugs we fixed.
Hope that helps!
A List Apart
4 Reader Comments
Back to the ArticleTri Nugraha
Hi Jessica,
Thank you for writing this article and giving such useful insights. My name is Tri, I’m product designer from Tokopedia, Indonesian e-commerce.
I have some questions if you don’t mind to answer :)
1. How do you decide who is the participants for your research flows?
2. How many participants needed when you conduct concept validation or usability testing?
3. When you do a series of research with users, do you do it with the same participants?
Thanks for your answer :)
Jessica Harllee (article author)
Hey Tri, thanks so much!
1. How do you decide who is the participants for your research flows?
We choose participants based on what kind of audience we’re focusing on for our project. For example, on the seller side, we might weigh certain factors: how long has their shop been open? Have they had a sale? Are they also an active buyer? Where are they located? How many sales do they have per year? What types of items do they sell? What features do they have turned on?
Sometimes we want an average sampling of sellers from across the board. Other times we might want to focus on experienced sellers who do a certain number of sales per year. Our research team then recruits participants based on this criteria.
2. How many participants needed when you conduct concept validation or usability testing?
Usually for each round of usability testing, we’ll talk to 8-12 people over the course of two days. Depending on the project, we might do up to 10 rounds of usability testing every few weeks throughout the project.
3. When you do a series of research with users, do you do it with the same participants?
When we’re doing usability testing, we don’t use the same participants for the same project twice to get the most diverse feedback possible. One of the benefits of prototype groups, though, is that we’re able to stay in contact with people over the course of the project. This allows us to follow up with them about questions they had or bugs we fixed.
Hope that helps!
A Wordpress Designer
Testing is easily the most overlooked aspect of web design. Thanks for the case study!
Themosis
Very interesting article. Can you provide a list of tools/tips you use for showing and testing your wireframes and designs with your users?