Do you conduct user research or validation tests for your apps?

Users
1

Hey everyone! Hope you're having a good week.

I would love to start a conversation about user research and user testing with you all. Do you currently conduct user research before building new apps or surveys? Do you conduct usability tests after an app is built? Have any tips for your fellow group members? If not, are there things that prevent you from incorporating it into your process?

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Best,

Meghan

2

Hi Meghan,

We've been refining our processes for involving users in design and testing for years now, and though the degree to which we can interact directly is influenced somewhat by the budget, whenever we are able we will consult heavily with user groups during the design process through surveys and face to face sessions. Budget is generally the only constraint on this. For testing we use surveys, focus group demo sessions and screen recorded and observed usability tests. When we are unable to do this we encourage our clients to do so and help them with coordinating design and testing sessions.

When we create proposals or assist with funding requests we always ask for the budget to cover these activities. There's no doubt the most successful apps we have built are those that have the most user involvement prior to deployment.

Cheers,
Amber

1 Like
3

Thanks, Amber! That's great to hear you are able to involve users prior to development and see the correlation to successful apps! Do you have any cases studies that compare the value of user involvement throughout the app building process? I would love to learn more about your process!

4

No case studies written at the moment, but it's something we will look at doing this year.

1 Like
5

Hi Meghan,

We've been using CommCare for ALL our field activities for 3 years now, and the lessons learned from the past years always have one point: involve more users in the design and testing steps of the projects.

From last year, we started discussion the app requirement with both the Program teams (data users) and the field teams (our real users) as we usually don't know about all the challenges they faces in the rural areas they are working in. we also have one to two weeks testing by some of the field staff (this covers both the User experience and the data quality check) before rolling out the app. So far we've been able to improve our data quality and the adoption rate of the app with having in mind this quote from our CTO "YOU ARE NOT YOUR USER".

Cheers,

1 Like
6

Thanks, Eyram! Great to hear you are validating apps with user testing before roll out!