User profiles are a valuable tool when it comes to designing and developing products that work well for your customers. The more you know about them, the better your product will be. Here are six ways to build the best user profiles for UX testing.
1. Start With Your Personas
Persona development is a crucial part of the UX testing process. If you don’t have personas, you might as well stop reading this article for now. Personas are fictional representations of your users based on research and market analysis. They help you understand why people behave the way they do and what might motivate them to take action (or not).
Persona development is an iterative process that involves both qualitative and quantitative research techniques, from interviews to surveys to data mining. Once you have your personas, they should be used as a reference point throughout the entire design process, especially during usability testing sessions.
2. Look Beyond Your Own Opinions
One of the most common mistakes that UX professionals make when creating user profiles is that they don't look beyond their own opinions. They simply create a profile from their point of view and then test it against other people's similar opinions. This can lead to inaccurate results, as the test subject may have different needs than those that you've imagined.
Instead, you should work to understand what your target audience wants and needs from your product or service. Try to identify any pain points or frustrations they're having with other products in your field. You can also use analytics data to see how people interact with your site, so you can get an idea of what they're looking for when they visit it.
3. Do Some Research
If you’re not already familiar with the user profiles for your product, it’s time to do some research. You should know who your users are, what they want from your product, and how they use it.
Take a look at the user profiles of your competitors or other similar products in your space, as well as any current user surveys or feedback forms. You can also talk to salespeople about their top clients and ask them what their most common requests are from customers.
4. Build Out the Details
The more detailed your user profile is, the more useful it will be for UX testing. A general profile is not enough to inform your testing strategy — you need to know things like whether they use a mobile device or desktop computer, what their job title is, how old they are, etc. This kind of detail helps you understand if there are any differences in how different segments use your product or service (for example, if one age group tends to use a desktop while another uses a mobile device).
It also helps determine which parts of your product or service will be most relevant to each segment: If one age group tends to use desktops while another uses mobile devices, then you should tailor different features toward each audience by creating separate versions of your site that's optimized for each device type. You can also conduct A/B tests on different versions of your site or application to determine which versions are most effective at converting customers and increasing revenue using a test management platform to track your results.
5. Don’t Build Livestock
Livestock are people who take up space and just sit there. They don’t interact with your website or app, they don’t provide feedback, and they don’t help you build a better product.
Livestock are the equivalent of people who show up to a focus group armed with their own opinions, ready to tell you how wrong you are. They can be very helpful in some cases, but when it comes down to it, they’re not really there for you — they’re there for themselves.
So if you’re trying to build a successful product, don’t let the livestock in. Keep them out by creating a clear and concise process for gathering user feedback. This doesn’t mean that you should ignore your customers — quite the opposite, actually. It means that you should be able to filter out people who aren’t helping you build a better product while still providing them with basic customer service.
6. Get Feedback From Colleagues and Stakeholders
If you're working on an internal project where you have direct access to users, it's easy to get feedback on your user profiles. But what if you're building an external website or app? You may not have access to all of your users' demographic information — especially if they're anonymous visitors — so how do you create a complete profile?
One way is to ask colleagues and stakeholders to fill out their own version of your user profile template based on their experience with that person or group. If someone tells you that your target audience is "women aged 35-55," ask them what behaviors they expect from that group — what kind of content do they read or watch? What kind of products do they buy?
Takeaway
Needless to say, only using demographic data will hurt your UX testing abilities. Actually speaking with users and finding out their behaviors is a much more effective way of getting the information you need. You'll actually be able to find out what makes them tick. And then armed with this information, you can build appropriate user profiles for your users that will make testing easier for you.
