User Research and Testing

Appnovation’s Approach

We conduct user research in various project stages and for different purposes. Whether our task is website redesign, new app development or internal system launch our experts do it all. The user research is the foundation for sustainable and effective design solution.

Appnovation values a pragmatic approach and will assess what knowledge and data already exists. Based on that we will come up with the user research plan that answers the right questions and is delivered on time and budget.

Audience research

Any digital development starts with the understand for whom it's being built: understand your audience, uncover the solution. Through audience research, our team formulates who your end customers are, what they need, what their expectations are, and how they engage with your products or services.

Based on these insights, we craft bespoke and informed user personas, designed to develop customer/client connections.

To understand how users use your digital product to accomplish various tasks, Appnovation’s experts conduct task analysis and investigate use cases. Knowing the context and environment that user is in when interacting with your product, helps us discover mental models that impact user's decision making processes and, ultimately, the online actions. This all allows us to predict how technology can, and should address user needs in the most helpful manner.

Common audience research methods we employ include:

• Scripted and unscripted user interviews
• Ethnographic studies and contextual inquiries
• Observations
• Surveys and questionnaires
• Focus groups
• Customer reviews

Content and information architecture research

In concert with marketing strategy that will feed the digital application, content and information architecture research can be instrumental to ensure users get the content they need, and are able to find it easily and intuitively.

Our researchers use content and IA research to validate hypothesis about information hierarchy, structure, terminology and findability.

We often use these, among other, research methods:

• Card sorting
• Tree testing
• Keyword analysis
• Content analysis
• Analytics review

Usability research

A critical step in our experience design process is understanding what are pain points of an existing application, or testing design for a new application. In this case, usability research and usability testing can help us discover how users interact with an application and what issues they experience.

Similarly, Appnovation has dedicated teams who conduct usability tests to validate design and information architecture on a new application. Based on goals and KPIs, we prepare user scenarios and help recruit participants.

Through user testing, we identify flaws and difficulties in usability and iterate as early as possible. We test users performing real tasks when using your application according to scenarios that we set, and observe their actions. We measure completion of tasks, time it takes to perform them, and record their attitudes about information architecture, content and design. Based on this direct user feedback, we make recommendations for improvements based on the evidence.

Depending on the scale and size of the project our researchers choose on-site or remote usability tests. Using wireframes and interactive prototyping we also test usability on various devices.

Analytics and user behaviour

No research and project starts without our peek into Google Analytics, HotJar, Clicky and similar tools. Having access to data about navigations paths, conversions, click rates and other measurable actions allow us see trends and identify pitfalls. Quantifiable data we can gather from analytics review inform design decisions and serve as benchmark for measuring success and monitoring KPIs.

A/B testing

An effective method to test different variants of the same page is A/B testing, sometimes also called split testing. Especially in conversion-driven sites, our UX designers test two variants with one or more variables to measure which one performs better when shown to users at random.

Appnovation uses A/B testing to continuously measure and tweak application design to improve the user experience and successfully achieve business objectives.

Gains and Business Benefits

For Appnovation's UX design team user research is not a luxury, nor a way to spend hours and hours investigating everything that lives under the sun. We do it to frame the issues and engage end users for ideation and validation.

We walk in the shoes of your users. We use direct insights we get from empathising with your users to generate ideas and design solutions that will address and exceed their expectations.

We follow iterative design approach, which means we can offer rapid design solutions with lean research at the start of projects. By engaging project stakeholders in the ideation process we strive for participatory design and make your team part of the project.

Your users are the real experts and our researchers' job is to involve them in the application design. Weather it's launching a new product or service and testing concepts and ideas or conducting a narrow, highly targeted and focused research about UX improvements for a certain feature, Appnovation's team will have a custom research plan that fits the project needs.