Link to Marvel App: https://marvelapp.com/10b1b6b6/screen/33435930
There are many different approaches a designer can bring to the design thinking process. But all of these tests can share a common goal. Or as The Interaction Design Foundation states, “there is a need to test out the solutions implanted within the current design. If users experience difficulties, then the design team must revisit their list of potential solutions and strategies in order to establish new ways of solving the same problems.” Testing is defined by the IDF as “involving generating user feedback as related to the prototypes you have developed, as well as gaining a deeper understanding of your users.” When the users help to give a designer feedback from their experience with the product, the designers can take what they learned and apply it to what they believe are the best solutions to those problems. Sometimes designers are able to fix those problems on their first try, but other times it may take more than one attempt to fix a problem or have another problem raised as a result of the changes. By observing their product being interacted with in person, the instantaneous knowledge they gather can quickly be combined with the knowledge of empathy and ideas gathered from previous stages of the design thinking process. This is important because design thinking should not be looked at as a non-linear process. Every stage from empathize to prototype can be called upon from the knowledge gathered in the testing phase.
At the end of the day, the testing phase revolves around how the user does with the product. So it seems fair that most of focus be on the user. User research is very important to the testing stage. The Interaction Design Foundation talks about how research can help to inspire the design, evaluate solutions, and measure impact. To help sort these out, the research is looked at in terms of qualitative and quantitative. Qualitative focus on a deeper understanding of the users lives while quantitative measure behavior.
Even the scientific method takes into account the problems of human error possibly affecting the results of a lab, so that the data is as accurate as possible. So should the same effort be put into the testing process of design thinking? Absolutely. Some of the things that makes humans so unique is their set of emotions and thinking process. It is not statistical errors of data that designers have to worry about, but rather gaining honest feedback from their users. One of the problems a designer can face is empathy from their users fearing that they will hurt the designer’s feelings if they say negative things about the product. What they have to realize is that they are hurting designers even more by not giving the correct feedback because then the product can go to the next stage and possibly fail with the public. The Interaction Design Foundation suggests that the tester say there is a 3rd party involved with no relationship. Another problem that can possibly be faced in user testing is the user feeling they are at fault for the product not working. They may blame themselves at points where the product was actually at fault and don’t address it as the problem. The Interaction Design Foundation suggests that designers communicate clearly at the beginning of the test that the system is being tested, not the user’s individual performance. Designers can choose to move on if they feel small blunders were merely coincidental, but the best designs are ones that users look at in depth and make sure can handle any situation and send it out into the world with 110% confidence in their product.
