Good tool for remote user testing using your own participants?

Tools
#1

I’m new to this community, we’re looking for people who have been in the same situation as us and could maybe offer some tips.

We’re an established company, with thousands of users; and we specifically want to use our own users for the usability testing (since they are already qualified users and have some knowledge of the product already), we’re not interested in recruiting a group of random participants from a panel of testers.

Our app is a web app, behind a login. We have noticed a lot of usability testing tools are best for websites, such as eCommerce sites, hotel booking sites, etc, which are suitable for a broad range of users accessing a public website. Our app has a specific target audience and has a login to access the apps feature.

We also want to automate as much of the usability testing as possible, so our UX team doesn’t have to be on the calls with them in real-time.

Ideally, we’d be able to generate some usability test link, which we can then send to our customers via the Intercom widget or through a newsletter inviting them to participate. The customer would then be able to record their screen and speak their thoughts aloud. Our UX team can then go into the tool and review all the videos.

The most important thing is to make the user experience on the participants’ side simple - ideally, they should not spend a lot of time installing software and setting everything up. It would be great if it was possible to give each participant a separate link (with login credentials for test account), however, not sure if something like that is possible.

How can we best gain user insights from our current userbase?

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#2

Welcome @kristina – interesting challenge. Not something I’ve encountered before so let’s call in the @Researchers

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#4

If I’m not mistaken I think Validately lets you do this very thing. I have only once or twice done this “turn them loose” style unmoderated screen video and talk-aloud audio capture, usually I am on Gotomeeting speaking with the participant and recording video and audio (for selfish reasons, since I am usually asking some discovery questions for part of the session.)

Here’s a fairly recent Validately example on Youtube:

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#5

This is not exactly what you were asking, but I tend to find that having the team watch the videos afterward can actually take longer and produce fewer insights than doing interviews. This is not always true, but something to be aware of.

That said usertesting.com, loop11, and validate.ly are three unmoderated tools you may want to check out. They just might be the tools you are looking for.

Also, I have a screener embedded in “My Account” which is where our users modify their accounts. This has been an effective recruiting method for our current customers/users. I have had no problem recruiting uses via this method.

Good luck!

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#6

Usertest.io are in beta and so super cheap, and I believe they allow you to use your own users!

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