Watch, don't lead

[GIVE THIS TO THE ROOM · the second half of the station crash course]

The classic method here is thinking aloud, and Jakob Nielsen has called it the number one usability tool for decades. His recipe is three steps: get representative users, give them real tasks, then stay quiet and let them narrate. The user mutters their way through your screens ("okay, I guess this button... no, that is not it...") and that stream is the data.

Your only interventions: if they go quiet, a gentle "what are you thinking?". If they ask "should I click this?", the answer is "what would you do at home?". Never explain the interface. Every hint you give is a finding you erased, and an untrained helper who keeps clarifying can change what the user does entirely. The prototype has to survive the user alone, because that is how it will live in the world.

Watch for three things, and write them down as they happen:

1. Where they hesitate. A pause is a question the screen failed to answer.
2. Where they tap something expecting it to do a thing it does not.
3. Whether they can say what the product is for after the first screen.

The one-line log. For each user, one row, written in the moment: what they were trying to do, what they actually did, the sentence they said. Three rows per team is a tested prototype. Do not write conclusions during the round; write behaviour. Conclusions are for the pitch, fifteen minutes later.

And chase the frustration, not the praise. Users are polite. The thing that failed teaches you more than the thing they said they liked.

Sources: Jakob Nielsen, "Thinking Aloud: The #1 Usability Tool", Nielsen Norman Group, 2012 · Kate Moran, "Usability Testing 101", Nielsen Norman Group, 2019.