Testing in the wild defined

Lately I’ve been talking a lot about “usability testing in the wild.” There are a lot of people out there who make their livings as usability practitioners. Those people know that the conventional way to do usability testing is in a laboratory setting. If you have come to this blog from outside the world of user experience research, that may never have occurred to you.

Some of the groups I’ve been working with recently do all their testing in the wild. That is, they never set foot in a lab, but instead conduct evaluations wherever their users normally do the tasks the groups are interested in observing. That setting could be a grocery store, City Hall, on the bus, or at a home or workplace – or any number of other places.

A “wild” usability test sometimes has another feature: it is lightly planned or even ad hoc. Just last night I was on a flight from Boston to San Francisco. I’ve been working with a team to develop a web site that lists course offerings and a way to sign up to take the courses. As I was working through the navigation and checking wireframes, the guy in the seat next to me couldn’t help looking over at my screen. He asked me about the site and the offerings, explaining that they looked like interesting topics. I didn’t have a prototype, but I did have the wireframes. So, after we talked for a moment about what he did for a living and what seemed interesting about the topics listed, I showed him the wireframe for the first page of the site and said, “Okay, from the list of courses here, is there something you would want to take?” He said yes, so I said, “What do want to do next, then?” He told me and I showed him the next appropriate wireframe. And we were off.

I learned heaps for the team about whether this user found the design useful and what he valued about it. It also gave me some great input for a more formal usability test later. Testing in the wild is great for early testing of concepts and ideas you have about a design. It’s one quick, cheap way to gain insights about designs so teams can make better design decisions.