Top Tools: User Testing

By Insight Platforms

• article

• Online Qualitative
• User Experience (UX) Research
• User Feedback
• User Journey Mapping
• Remote User Testing
• User Testing

User Testing in a Nutshell

User testing is a key part of the UX Research toolkit. It involves observing users as they interact with a digital product or service. This could be a live website, an application or prototypes / designs in various stages of completion.

Insights from user testing help to identify usability issues, understand user behavior and gather user feedback so the experience can be improved.

Historically, user testing was conducted in-person – frequently in a lab environment, to allow the test session to be observed and recorded.

Today, most user testing is conducted remotely on a moderated or an unmoderated basis, Users complete a series of tasks which may be broadly defined – for early stage exploratory feedback – or narrow, in order to test or validate specific features or problem areas.

The user’s screen will normally be recorded as they complete the tasks; a webcam video of their face is captured as they conduct the test; and users are encourage to ‘think aloud’ as well. Users will also typically complete a brief pre / post test interview (if the test is moderated) or answer a set of survey questions.

This top tools for user testing below all have the the features described here; but many also have additional features for UX or market research including micro-surveys, video diaries, screen recordings, heatmaps, A/B testing, card sorting, tree testing and other features.

And it’s not an exhaustive list – you can find more solutions by searching the Insight Platforms Directory. There’s also no hierarchy implied.

Want an intro to the basics of UX research? Get up to speed with this Insight Platforms Academy course:

The Top Tools for User Testing

This list is randomly ordered. No hierarchy is implied.

Maze

Maze offers a set of user research and testing features for product development. The tool offers prototype testing, live website testing, feedback surveys, interview studies, card sorting, and tree testing. It also has features for participant recruitment, such as accessing a global panel or targeting specific user pools.

Maze enables researchers to analyze research data with automated reports, clips, design metrics, path analysis, heatmaps, and video recordings. The platform has some AI-powered features like dynamic follow-up, contextual suggestions, and bias detection.

Trymata

Trymata is a digital experience insights platform offering remote usability testing and product analytics suites.

Trymata (formerly TryMyUI) is a digital experience insights platform offering remote usability testing & product analytics suites. Trymata’s usability testing suite offers tools for setting up, facilitating, and analyzing user tests of all kinds of digital products. Trymata’s product analytics suite offers tools for learning exactly how website visitors are experiencing & interacting with sites.

UserTesting

UserTesting is a platform for recruitment, management, and reporting of remote user experience tests for products, websites, or apps. The tool allows users to find and reach their target audiences through purpose-built or partner networks, facilitating insights from real users.

The platform emphasizes the importance of customer empathy and offers resources to help users keep their customers at the center of the experiences they create. With a focus on providing real human insight delivered rapidly, UserTesting enables teams to observe people engaging with their products and services to gain a firsthand understanding of user experiences.

UXtweak

UXtweak features content organization, usability testing, recruitment, and surveying tools to help brands conduct user experience research. Testing methods include card sorting, mobile and preference testing, behavior surveys, recruitment tools, and more.

The platform aims to help brands create websites that are navigable, with content that is discoverable and accessible by understanding users’ needs and behaviors and allowing brands to observe the ways audiences engage with interfaces and prototypes.

Fable

Fable is an accessibility testing platform powered by people with disabilities.

It allows accessibility managers, user researchers, designers, and developers to connect with people with disabilities remotely and on-demand.

Fable helps companies directly collaborate with people with disabilities to build accessible digital products.

UXArmy

UXArmy is a usability testing tool tailored for examining digital products. The platform is adaptable to for testing prototypes, apps, and websites and offers tools based on card sorting, tree testing, moderated research, and unmoderated usability testing.

The platform also has video recording capabilities to enable researchers to conduct user interviews and evaluate concepts, usability, and information architecture. UXArmy also offers a User Panel to help researchers find the right participants from various demographics to gather well-rounded qualitative feedback for user-friendly products.

Civicom SeeMeNavigate

Civicom Marketing Research Services offers global online and in-person qualitative research solutions, specifically offering assistance for mobile qualitative research and online community management support. The tool features transcription, translation, recruiting, and analytics services for online communities, mobile qualitative research, and website usability testing.

Civicom also offers a portable HD 360° recording and streaming solution that captures live video for in-person focus groups. The platform’s main functions center marketing research services, conferencing, transcriptions, virtual assistance, artificial intelligence, business process, outsourcing, and data entry.

Field Notes

Field Notes allows users to capture and organize user-generated videos worldwide through smartphones. Focusing on remote user-generated content and mobile accessibility, the platform provides ways for organizations to tap into perspectives from customers, employees, research participants, and more specifically healthcare professionals and patients, from diverse demographics and geographic locations.

Field Notes is available on iOS and Android platforms, allowing users to organize video collections for later dataset analysis and decision-making for remote teams and workers. Field Notes also provides flexibility to personalize projects, regulate shared content, and oversee numerous contributors and tasks.

Indeemo

Indeemo specializes in online qualitative research through mobile ethnography to garner insights from respondents. Users have access to global language support in over 20 languages and the tool allows users to capture video of real-life behaviors while adhering to up-to-date security standards to maintain confidentiality and data integrity.

The tool’s services aim to provide an interactive dimension to traditional research methods with offerings based in digital ethnography, diary studies, focus group analysis tools, video surveys, customer journey mapping for detailed insights into user interactions, product testing, and path-to-purchase studies.

Userlytics

Userlytics is a user-testing platform for websites, mobile apps, and prototypes. The tool provides users access to a global panel of over 2 million participants to provide insights into user interactions with products through qualitative visualizations.

Researchers can create custom test scripts with a user-friendly interface, including tasks and standardized questions. Userlytics focuses on simplifying digital testing and improving the user experience with capabilities like moderated and unmoderated testing, quantitative testing, website usability testing, mobile app testing, prototype testing, accessibility testing, and more.

Preely

Preely offers a remote user testing platform for refining digital prototypes through online collaboration. Teams can connect through Preely to validate ideas, gather insights, and improve products efficiently. With self-service prototype creation and quick test dissemination, Preely streamlines the feedback process while ensuring GDPR compliance and also uses real-time analytics to provide data on user behavior and engagement.

Preely’s main services include: the User Panel which allows teams to build tailored user panels and manage participation and The Feedback Module, which provides quick user insights.

Loop11

Loop11 offers website user testing solutions, that help usability professionals, web managers, and designers to orchestrate online scenarios for participants. With a focus on accessibility, Loop11 caters to both qualitative feedback and large-scale quantitative assessments and provides video and audio session replays and recordings.

The tool’s features include online usability testing, UX benchmarking, A/B testing, true intent studies, prototype testing, mobile & tablet UX testing, and more. Users can also use Loop11 to optimize search engine findability and information architecture to ensure user-approved designs before development and enhance navigation.

Lookback

Lookback is a customer research platform offering video-based tools to capture user face, screen, and voice globally. The tool provides remote and in-person sessions to collect user feedback on products, websites, or prototypes during development. Teams can also conduct usability testing with users worldwide and invite collaboration with mobile and desktop interfaces. Lookback’s main features revolve around user testing, customer interviews, and research with the tool ‘Eureka.’

UXTesting

UXTesting is a qualitative and quantitative user testing platform for gauging user satisfaction with Live and Self-Test options. The tool provides insights into user interactions through features like emotion detection and eye tracking. With a focus on customer experiences, UXTesting helps companies identify usability issues early and iterate products as fit to create more intuitive interfaces and a stronger market presence.

Userbrain

Userbrain is an online user testing platform that helps researchers discover product usability insights. The platform has collected thousands of testers to provide feedback on websites, prototypes, and digital products. Using targeted selection, Userbrain provides custom scenarios to direct testers to explore specific features and yield relevant insights. The platform captures full-screen videos with real-time thoughts and reactions and can be used to identify friction points, validate design choices, and construct user-centric products.

Pingpong by Hotjar

Hotjar expands its user analytics suite with Hotjar Engage, integrating PingPong for user testing and interviews. Hotjar Engage streamlines scheduling, conducting, recording, and sharing user interviews, eliminating third-party tools and complex scheduling while providing access to a pool of 175,000 testers. Hotjar Engage also includes calendar integration for Google and Outlook 365 to help users reduce coordination time in gathering qualitative data and refine offerings in product development remotely through user feedback.

Useberry

Useberry is a user feedback and prototype analytics platform. It integrates with design and prototyping tools (Adobe XD, Sketch, InDesign, Marvel), and captures user behaviour as they navigate apps or websites.

Outputs include click heatmaps, user flow maps, screen recordings and answers to a variety of survey question types (single / multi choice, scales, open ends).

PlaybookUX

PlaybookUX is another platform with solutions based on refining websites, products, and prototypes through qualitative and quantitative user experience research.

Specializing in navigation, content organization, and marketing strategies, the platform allows researchers to streamline recruitment, conduction, and analysis of UX studies like video, audio, and imagery. With moderated and unmoderated usability testing and user experience testing features, PlaybookUX also utilizes analytic tools and shareable reporting capabilities.

Userback

Userback is a user testing solution for in-app feedback, screen annotation, video recording and session replay aimed at helping product teams collect user feedback, fix bugs faster, validate new feature ideas, and manage user feedback effectively. The tool allows for in-app or onsite visual feedback, micro-surveys, and community feature portals to collect high-context feedback.

With bug and issue-tracking features integrated directly into developer workflows using console logs, session replays, browser insights, and more, Userback enables teams to address issues promptly. Researchers can also validate product ideas by sharing new or existing ideas directly with users, enriching their roadmap tools with ideas. The tool also has customizable templates and a no-code Browser Extension.

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