A couple of weeks back we took our latest website site design to the annual conference which my employers host. This is a pretty well attended event which takes place over three days. I was told that 14,000 people came to the event this year. A healthy number by my standards and a great opportunity to conduct user testing.

During this conference I had the rare opportunity observe user testing first hand. As a designer, my experience with testing has typically meant, passively accepting that all those beautiful widgets I’ve spent weeks developing need to be tossed out or reinvented. There is a tendency for us, designers to see user testing as an opportunity for ridicule. More often than not we send out our best work and receive a litany of small complaints which seem designed to humiliate. Designers don’t see our user base struggling with the UI we design.

In art school when you get “constructive” criticism it’s delivered by of students who know they’ll have to face your criticism in turn. However, there is no compunction to temper criticism during testing. When you get it wrong it stings all the more because if it’s an honest test, your getting unbiased criticism.

So when I was offered the chance to view the testing first hand, I was hesitant to go, but curiosity won out.

The tests I attended were conducted over three days based on a script developed with a number of target questions. At the end of the test there was the opportunity for some free-form questions. Tests ran about an hour for each subject. I was allowed to observe and ask a few questions at the end of the test.

I would describe this whole process as humbling. It’s hard to watch a user struggle to find a link they can’t see. All those little details you thought you’d get around to later are waiting there and glaringly obvious during the test. Watching these users really gave me a sense of the importance of the details. Underlining links, keeping page region clearly delineated etc.

Designers like artists (and many of us are artist), tend to have a good deal of ego wrapped up in our designs. Objective criticism keeps us honest when the test are well constructed and fair.

When you get it right, you know you really nailed it, and that’s a great feeling.