Usabilla Blog

Analyzing your test results is the final step of online usability testing with Usabilla. This post will show you how you can use the analyze page on your dashboard to see your participants feedback or export your data to use it in a different application.

Analyze your results

Read the rest of this entry »

Recruiting the right participants for your test can seem the most difficult thing. Not with Ethnio. Ethnio is an app developed by Bolt | Peters for live recruiting. By adding one simple line of code to your website, you can display a pop-up recruiting screener to your website’s visitors.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve just upgraded our servers and we released some interesting improvements. We’ve made some changes under the hood, enhanced the user experience of the test interface and implemented some handy features in the analysis. We will outline the most important changes in this post.

Improved points

Read the rest of this entry »

From 12 to 14 May 2010 the European UX scene gathers at UX-Lx in beautiful Lisbon for three days of interesting keynotes and workshops. Usabilla is one of the proud sponsors of this conference.
We’ve set up a great deal with UX-Lx: buy a Gold or Platinum UX-Lx ticket and save 751 dollar on a Large Usabilla account!

How does it work?

1. Buy your Gold or Platinum conference ticket directly on the website of UX-Lx (if you already haven’t bought one).
2. Sign up for a Standard account or upgrade your existing Free or Small account to a Standard account.
3. Send us a mail with your registration details for UX-Lx and account name and we’ll upgrade your account.
4. We’ll upgrade your Standard plan to a Large plan for free.

In February the interaction design community gathered in Savannah for three exciting days of keynotes and workshops at IXD10.
Nate Bolt, one of the founders of the US based usability research firm Bolt | Peters, gave an interesting presentation about remote research. Nate has overseen hundreds of user experience projects for customers like Sony, Oracle, Volkswagen, Greenpeace, Autodesk, and many others. In about 30 minutes he shared his experiences on remote research.

In his presentation at IXD10 Nate also shared his experiences with Usabilla (skip to 15:00 min):

“It’s (the heatmaps) a great deliverable internally… It’s really easy to understand.”

“We like it as an add-on to other kinds of research, because it’s so easy to create. It just takes a few minutes.”

Be sure to check out the book deal we’ve set up with Rosenfeld: upgrade your account and receive a copy of the book ‘Remote Research‘ by Nate Bolt & Tony Tulathimutte.

We’ll be attending UX Lx 2010 in sunny Lisbon from 12 to 14 May. If you’re fast you can order early bird tickets and meet the international UX scene in beautiful Portugal. Great speakers (Steve Krug, Jared Spool, Peter Merholz, Luke Wroblewski, and many others), interesting workshops for everyone (beginners, intermediates, & advanced).

UX Lx is a unique three-day User Experience event set in sunny Lisbon, Portugal on May 12-14 2010. A premier event for User Experience Professionals, Designers, Information Architects and Usability Practitioners, UX Lx will bring together more than 300 professionals. Coupled with a set of world renowned speakers, all of them published authors and leading experts in their fields, UX Lx will be one of the largest events of its kind in Europe.

With 12 though-provoking talks, 16 hands-on workshops and 16 open sessions, UX Lx will pre- sent the latest knowledge in the field, giving attendees the information and techniques they will need to push their work forward. Workshops will be split in three levels: Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced, enabling newcomers and seasoned professionals alike to hone up their skills and techniques. Talks will present all the latest topics in a thought-provoking fashion and are set to be starting points for discussion and further investigation. Open sessions will allow free submis- sions and will be curated by the organising committee, enabling up and coming professionals to show their knowledge and gain recognition. A range of networking events and side activities is also being laid out so that everyone can have a great time at UX Lx.

Meet us in Lisbon and order your tickets here: ux-lx.com

We made an interesting deal with Rosenfeld Media.  If you upgrade your account to a standard or large plan now, you’ll receive a free copy of Rosenfeld Media’s newest publication: “Remote Research” by Nate Bolt and Tony Tulathimutte from Bolt | Peters. “Remote Research” is a must read for everyone who wants to learn more about the ins-and-outs of remote testing. Nate and Tony are excellent guides in the world of remote research and share their experiences in more than 200 usability tests in this funny and easy-to-read book.

Sign up for a Usabilla account now and receive a free copy of this book.
Already got an account? Log in and upgrade at your account page.

What others say about this book

“Nate and Tony have done it! They’ve described beautifully one of the user experience profession’s best-kept secrets—conducting remote usability tests. This book is a must-have for anyone thinking about remote testing, since it tackles everything you need from soup to nuts. I can’t wait to get a copy for my own bookshelf. Oh, it also will melt your face remotely.”
—Jared Spool CEO and Founding Principal, User Interface Engineering

“Remote user research helped us find a good mix of users whose intent was to conduct the same tasks that we were examining on the AAA TripTik Travel Planner. It was thrilling for our team of developers, researchers, and managers to watch and hear travelers interact with the application in their own environments.”
—Renuka Sastri Manager of Publishing Marketing, AAA

“The techniques in this book will make every designer’s and user researcher’s life much easier. Nate and Tony use the attitude and power of Web 2.0 technologies to create a new way of thinking about user experience research. They share their expertise clearly, concisely, and with a great sense of humor, giving practitioners step-by-step details to conduct remote research of virtually any complexity.”
—Mike Kuniavsky author, Observing the User Experience

Interested in our deal? Sign up for a Usabilla account now and receive a free copy of this book. Already got a Usabilla account? Log in to your account and upgrade directly.

We’ve just released some minor enhancements for the test details page, to solve some important usability issues. These small improvements include extra feedback on the status of your test, disabled buttons instead of disappeared buttons, and some improved styling.

Fixed issue: ‘Disappearing’ actions were very confusing

We do no longer hide the ‘Activate’, ‘Preview’, and ‘Analyze’ buttons when these functions are not (yet) available. You can’t start a test that doesn’t contain at least one page and one task. We’ve used disabled styles, a tooltip, and a additional message to explain why the ‘Activate’ and ‘Preview’ buttons are disabled. Showing the most important actions, regardless the state of a test, should also help to create a more complete picture of the entire testing process from the start.

Fixed issue: Ordering tasks was a ‘hidden feature’

In one of our recent releases we’ve added drag-and-drop functionality to change the order of tasks. You can simply drag and drop tasks to order them any way you like. Many users did not notice this feature. We hope we’ve solved this issue by simply adding a small icon.

Aesthetics: finetuning

We’ve made an enormous amount of small visual changes. We hope all these small changes together improve the look and feel of our application. We’re also working on user experience improvements for the front-end. We hope to be able to launch these changes in a few weeks. Stay tuned.

Login to your account (or create one) and please tell us what you think.

Mashable made a fresh start of the new year by launching a redesign. The intention of this new design was to put more focus on the stories, removing clutter, and dividing the content into sections (Home, Social Media,  Mobile, Web Video, Entertainment, Business, Tech, and Jobs). In the past week more than 150 people commented on the blog post about the new design. Most reactions on Mashable seem to be positive about the new look and feel: ‘Fresh & clean’, ‘I like the sections’, ‘More professional’, and ‘Clean and Simple’. What are the most important changes in this design iteration and what can we learn from feedback? We asked 60 social-media-savy participants for feedback.

Mashable: What draws attention?

Read this case on UX Booth

Social networks can be an interesting place to recruit participants who are interested in your website, product or service, to participate in a short test.  Usabilla offers some simple ways to promote your tests on Facebook and Twitter by posting the URL of your test and a short message on these social networks. You can also use the Redirect URL in Usabilla to make it easy for your participants to invite other participants and trigger a small viral effect.

Read the rest of this entry »