14. Design Testing with Users: Break Away from What You Think You Know—And Find Out How They Think

In Chapter 6 we covered several UX design techniques that can help you understand your user groups—their needs, attitudes, and preferences as they relate to the overall subject matter represented by your site.

This chapter discusses techniques that will help you gather user information about particular designs or elements of designs. We’ll focus on exploratory techniques often used early in the design phase and on testing to validate design decisions, which can be used at many points in your project. First, let’s talk about exploring design concepts with your users.

Carolyn Chandler

Concept is generally the word used to describe an abstract idea, such as happiness, collaboration, or efficiency. In the field of UX design, concept is also used to refer to design elements that are meant to represent one or more abstract ideas to the project team or a potential user. In this sense of the word, a conceptual design element can be visual (for example, a photo of a machine to represent the concept of efficiency) or it can be text-based (for example, a short collection of sentences written to express a company’s focus on efficiency, using words such as timely and responsive). Concept can also mean the exploration of wireframes, visual design mock-ups, or rough prototypes that are meant to express the general messaging on the site (see Chapter 13 for more on prototyping).