Effective Usability Testing

Steph Troeth

Your instructor: Steph Troeth

Workshop includes:

Unfortunately, this workshop is fully sold out! To be notified when we run the workshop again, please join the waiting list below:

Workshop, 5×2h + Q&A • Mon & Tue, July 11–25
10:00 AM – 12:30 PM PT (19:00 – 21:30 CET) • Check your time zone ⏰

How do you know what you’re designing is going to be usable—or understandable by your users? How can we decide if a feature is worth building?

Conducting usability testing can help you prioritise product features and make decisions on where to focus your design or development efforts. In this workshop, you’ll learn how to conduct effective usability tests.

Here’s What You Should Be Expecting:

Interactive live sessions
5 × 2.5h live sessions

Practical insights
From planning and testing to practice

Hands-on exercises
With reviews by your teacher

Life-time access
To all video recordings and examples

Dedicated Q&A time
To ask all your questions

Smashing Certificate
A well-deserved reward for your work

Knowing how to plan and run usability tests are among the most essential skills in intentional product design. The good news? The skills you learn in this workshop are translatable to other research methods.

User research skills are best learned through doing. Steph’s workshop will be highly interactive and hands-on, so you can practice the core techniques in a safe, supportive, and—above all—fun environment.

Who Is This For?

This is a full workshop, delivered in five 2.5 hour-long sessions with lots of time for hands-on practice and Q&A. It’s for anyone who wants to learn how to conduct usability testing, or desires to collaborate better with your user research team.

Whether you’re a designer, developer or a product manager, or looking to switch into user research as a career path—this workshop will help you build your skills and confidence in usability testing.

$450 ^.00Register for this workshop →5 × 2h live sessions + Q&A. July 11–25.
With all video recordings & slides. Get a ticket.

🎪 Save up to 25% on this workshop with a Smashing Membership.

What will attendees learn in this workshop?

Understand when to conduct usability testing
Ethics and consent for research
Plan a usability test in person and remotely
Determine which users will give you the best insights
Write a discussion guide
Conduct a usability test
Analyse and synthesise findings
Communicate insights
How to adapt usability testing to concept testing and guerilla/intercept-style research

About Steph Troeth

Steph is a strategist and design researcher. Steph is the Head of Research at dxw, a UK digital agency specialising in creating public services that improve lives. Prior to that, she helped a London health startup scale up their research practice, and was a senior researcher on contract at Google, working on their internal product suite that keeps Google’s services up 99.999% of the time.

She was the Head of Research at Clearleft, working with clients such as Spotify, Virgin Holidays and Greater London Authority. She also previously led design research at the Telegraph and spearheaded European customer research with MailChimp. She is also a regular speaker at conferences and guest lectures annually at the University of Greenwich.

Time & Schedule

This workshop is split over five days. Our virtual doors open at 8:45, we start at 9 AM PT.

The workshop sessions will run on the following days:

Mon, July 11, 10:00 – 12:30 PM PT (19:00 – 21:30 CET)
Tue, July 12, 10:00 – 12:30 PM PT (19:00 – 21:30 CET)
Mon, July 18, 10:00 – 12:30 PM PT (19:00 – 21:30 CET)
Tue, July 19, 10:00 – 12:30 PM PT (19:00 – 21:30 CET)
Mon, July 25, 10:00 – 12:30 PM PT (19:00 – 21:30 CET)

$450 ^.00Register for this workshop →5 × 2h live sessions + Q&A. July 11–25.
With all video recordings & slides. Get a ticket.

🎪 Save up to 25% on this workshop with a Smashing Membership.

Day 1: Understanding Usability Testing

9:45 am PT
Virtual doors open, registration, chat and introductions.

10:00 am – 12:00 am
Introduction to usability testing, comparison to other methods. Sampling, participant screening and recruitment. Ethics and consent. Research planning.