In the world of interactivity, the importance of user testing is drastically underestimated. Designers love to think that users will use their site the way they designed it without any hesitation and that everything is obvious. It’s nearly impossible to find a major flaw in something you’ve designed from the ground up.

A single user test can change all that very quickly as it has for me time and time again. The misconception of user testing is that it’s expensive and ultimately not worth it. There are many services that will gather “qualified participants” to user test your site or app for a reasonable sum. These services get the job done but you can bootstrap your own round of user testing for free.

Small scale user testing is an idea triumphed by Steve Krug in his wonderful usability book Don’t Make Me Think. His concepts are really solid and he preaches that even doing a single user test looking over the shoulder of a friend can do wonders for your site.

There are a few tools out there to make the user testing experience a little more rich and the good news is they’re all free!

Clikcheat

Clickheat is a free services that lets you see where users are clicking on a particular page. This kind of information can determine if certain page elements are being used or if users expect a feature to function differently than it does. Use the findings to de-clutter your site of unused items and move towards functionality that users want and use most.

Screenr

This web application is a free and easy screencasting service (for twitter mostly) that can be used for any number of things including web testing. Set up a tester to begin a screencast by clicking a link and then navigating to your site. When they are done instruct them to stop the screencast and send it to you via twitter or by emailing a link. This service can be used face to face or remotely to observe how the user moves his or her mouse around your site and any audio feedback they might have or questions about the site.

Your Own Two Eyes

No this isn’t the name of a web app the help you with user testing. Just as Steve Krug suggests, sit down a group of 5 friends in front of your latest web or application creation and let them run free. Make notes to yourself and observe where they click and how quickly they get confused. Even this simple interaction can be very valuable to your design process. Take your findings, make changes to your site, and test it again.

Other Applications

Chalkmark – A quick user test that asks users to complete tasks on your site and measures the results.

SMT (Simple Mouse Tracking) – A free way to record the mouse movements of visitors and play them back to examine.

Google Website Optimizer – Allows you to run multiple variations of your website and to track and compare the results.

Do You User Test?

Do you sing the praises of user testing application and websites? Is your design too bulletproof to require anyone to test it before you launch it? What applications do you use to test your site besides those mentioned? Has testing every opened your eyes to a major usability problem? Answer in the comments!

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