I’ve been testing the testing. Unmoderated and moderated UX tests with the same type of people on the same topic generate completely different results. What does that mean, and why is unmoderated testing not always living up to its promise?
Critical point of view
Let’s take a critical view of unmoderated user testing. What if there is potential value in the interaction between humans that adds that extra layer to research findings? What if we risk missing something important when introducing remote unmoderated testing? And what happens when people get paid quite a lot to do not too much?
I don’t claim to know everything about user testing, but I’ve been doing user research and testing for many years and have seen the rise of companies facilitating the processes. I have, of course, tried using these tools, and my conclusion is that they are helping us tick the box that testing has been done, but they are rarely giving us any deeper insights, because an insight is more than just an observation. The word is defined as “the ability to have a clear, deep, and sometimes sudden understanding of a complicated problem or situation,” according to Cambridge…