Know Your Content Before You Test It

Read (or watch or listen to) your content before you let users test it. You might think, “Isn’t that obvious?” Probably. But when we’re busy, it’s easy to skip this step now and cause ourselves big problems later, like these:

• We write a protocol that doesn’t make sense for the content—and explodes our testing sessions into wastes of time.
• We don’t realize that users are misunderstanding content, so we overlook content problems.
• We misdiagnose content problems as usability or design problems and vice versa—and then form the wrong solutions.

Here’s a quick example. A research team once usability tested a gaming website with membership levels. Having not reviewed the content deeply, the team reported that one membership level didn’t appeal to users because it was too expensive. This finding surprised everyone because the pricing was competitive. Turns out the problem was not the pricing but the content. The content caused users to think the membership was more costly than it was. Had the cause been recognized during the testing, then immediate follow up questions could have helped diagnose why the content misled people.

So, even though we’re all trying to do more with less, we can’t skip knowing the content we test. We might save time now, but we’ll lose productivity, insight, and the right solution later.