You’ve just completed usability testing. How do you make sure your stakeholders understand the results?

1 Define your goals

Before you start analyzing and reporting your usability testing data, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve with your results. What are the main research questions you wanted to answer? What are the key performance indicators you used to measure success? What are the specific recommendations you want to make based on your findings? Having a clear goal will help you focus on the most relevant and impactful data and avoid getting lost in the details.

2 Organize your data

Usability testing yields a lot of data, such as user feedback, task completion rates, error rates, and satisfaction scores. To make sense of this data, you need to organize it in a logical and consistent way. Affinity diagramming can help you group similar data points into themes or categories. Journey mapping visualizes the user’s steps, actions, emotions, and pain points throughout a scenario. Highlight reels create short video clips that showcase the most important or interesting user behaviors or comments. Quantitative analysis calculates and compares metrics like averages, percentages, or correlations.

3 Visualize your data

Once you have organized your data, you need to find a way to present it in a visually appealing and easy-to-understand way. Visualizing your data can help you highlight the main patterns, trends, and insights from your usability testing. For example, charts and graphs can be used to show the distribution, comparison, or relationship of quantitative data. Quotes and screenshots can illustrate the qualitative feedback and experiences of users. Heatmaps and eye-tracking can be used to display the areas of attention, interest, or confusion of users on a screen or page. Storyboards and personas are also useful for telling the stories and needs of different user segments or personas.

4 Write your report

Usability testing reports are documents that summarize and communicate the results of usability testing to stakeholders. They should be concise, clear, and actionable, containing an executive summary, background and objectives, methodology and participants, results and analysis, and recommendations and next steps. The executive summary should provide a brief overview of the main goals, methods, findings, and recommendations of the testing. Background and objectives should provide a detailed explanation of the context, scope, and purpose of the testing. Methodology and participants should include how, when, where, and with whom the testing was conducted. Results and analysis should present data organized by themes or categories with visualizations. Finally, recommendations and next steps should list specific and prioritized suggestions for improving usability based on the results.

5 Present your report

Presenting your usability testing report to stakeholders is a great way to engage, interact, and persuade them. To make your presentation successful, it’s important to tailor the content according to the audience’s needs and interests. You should also tell a story by using a narrative structure and including examples, anecdotes, and emotions. Visual aids such as slides, videos, or demos are also helpful for showing the results of the usability testing. Finally, invite feedback from your audience and be prepared to address any doubts or objections they may have.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?