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>So, whenever I design UI/UX for an app, I ask my mom to test. I have an informal rule that I will try to get someone at my job that has never seen or used the

>So, whenever I design UI/UX for an app, I ask my mom to test. I have an informal rule that I will try to get someone at my job that has never seen or used the application to be the one to test out new features or UI changes. Generally just asking when they have some time, handing them a phone or laptop, and asking them to do a task in the app (with a small amount of background about the task if needed). There has never been a case where this hasn't monumentally improved the application. Questions like "what do I do here?", "how do I get it to start?", and "did it work?" were extremely common for quite a while before we managed to get the UI in a good state. You just don't see the implicit assumptions you make at so many places. Sadly it's hard to "formalize" something like this (at least in my experience), because the benefits seem to be greatly reduced if the person testing has seen or used the application before, and I found it works best the "further away" someone is from software development.

JustSomeNobody 9y ago
Because you can't "formalize" humbleness. In fact, a lot of the tech culture, today, is anti-humble.
- Klathmon 9y ago
  I don't think it has anything to do with "humbleness". It's that there isn't really a way to formally gather and have people that haven't really ever used the application before, but know enough about the problem domain to be useful in testing. Not to mention that it's a non-renewable resource, once I've done it with someone for a specific part of the app, they are "burned" (at least for a few months). (that last sentence came across really... shitty sounding, but I can't figure out how to reword it to get the point across without sounding like I'm treating people like old computer parts, so I'll just add this disclaimer...) Any kind of "formal" process ends up just looking like QA, and they end up making the same kinds of assumptions that the developers and designers do since they work and know the application just as good if not better than them.
- msla 9y ago
  It isn't humility, it's learning. Once you've learned something, you can no longer remember what it's like to not know it. Not fully, anyway, and certainly not without deliberate effort. It takes quite a lot of mental effort to stop knowing something, and approach a task with the mindset of someone who's never known it. Good QA people should be able to do that, but it must be hard even for them.
z3t4 9y ago
Don't forget about repeated use. Do your users come back, or do they use the app only once !?
- Klathmon 9y ago
  This isn't the only thing we do for UI/UX stuff, it's just one that I've found can really help, and most developers should be able to do it in some fashion. We have plenty of analytics and user testing, but they tend to miss the case of users that are unable or unwilling to learn the application, and end up perpetually confused.

JustSomeNobody 9y ago

Because you can't "formalize" humbleness. In fact, a lot of the tech culture, today, is anti-humble.

Klathmon 9y ago
I don't think it has anything to do with "humbleness". It's that there isn't really a way to formally gather and have people that haven't really ever used the application before, but know enough about the problem domain to be useful in testing. Not to mention that it's a non-renewable resource, once I've done it with someone for a specific part of the app, they are "burned" (at least for a few months). (that last sentence came across really... shitty sounding, but I can't figure out how to reword it to get the point across without sounding like I'm treating people like old computer parts, so I'll just add this disclaimer...) Any kind of "formal" process ends up just looking like QA, and they end up making the same kinds of assumptions that the developers and designers do since they work and know the application just as good if not better than them.
msla 9y ago
It isn't humility, it's learning. Once you've learned something, you can no longer remember what it's like to not know it. Not fully, anyway, and certainly not without deliberate effort. It takes quite a lot of mental effort to stop knowing something, and approach a task with the mindset of someone who's never known it. Good QA people should be able to do that, but it must be hard even for them.

z3t4 9y ago

Don't forget about repeated use. Do your users come back, or do they use the app only once !?

Klathmon 9y ago
This isn't the only thing we do for UI/UX stuff, it's just one that I've found can really help, and most developers should be able to do it in some fashion. We have plenty of analytics and user testing, but they tend to miss the case of users that are unable or unwilling to learn the application, and end up perpetually confused.