Southern Tire Mart Usability Testing

Challenge

There’s a universal challenge when designing a new website: as soon as you make something and know how it’s “supposed” to work, you can no longer see it from the perspective of someone who doesn’t know what you know. How to solve for this? By asking people what they think. It’s critical to include users in the process.

Solution

Ten users were recruited to match a cross section of STM’s target audience personas (five retail, five commercial). I moderated the tests and recorded the session (see sample video clip). Tests were conducted on mobile and desktop devices. Participants were asked to accomplish a series of tasks designed to explore key features of the redesigned site. (For detail about how usability testing is done, see this post.)

My role

• Testing strategy and task development
• Coordination with testing participants
• Moderating the testing sessions
• Editing session videos into highlights clips
• Writing and presenting the findings and recommendations report

This project was done on contract for LimeLight Marketing.

FINDINGS/Recommendatios REPORT

What are user testing sessions like? Frankly, they can be tedious to watch, but this 1½ minute clip of the Southern Tire Mart mobile website test demonstrates how prompting the user to “Tell me what you’re thinking” can produce meaningful insights.