(Newswire.net — October 9, 2020) — Product testing enables businesses to gauge consumer interest and receive feedback on which areas need improvement through one-on-one interviews or focus groups. The goal is to determine which aspects of a product or device generate the most favorable or unfavorable attention, which elements make the product easier or harder to use, and what the resulting consumer sentiment will be surrounding the product. This type of research is vital to product innovation and development as it minimizes the risk of wasting valuable time and marketing dollars by focusing efforts and resources in the right direction, increasing the chances for success.
There are multiple challenges that research teams encounter during product testing. These can include figuring out the most effective approach to use to perform the testing, creating a template for testing each of the product’s features or usability, and determining which findings need to be prioritized. It is also necessary to make sure there is an ample amount of time to actually test the products as well as the timeline necessary for any product modifications. Failing to take any of these steps may lead to both quality issues and dissatisfied consumers that may result in long term consequences.
This is why it’s important to follow a set of best practices to help guide you in these challenges. Here are some tips to keep in mind:
1.) Define and Understand Your Objectives
Before launching interviews or focus group testing for a product or device, it is essential to define the objectives as this will help determine what you are looking for, the types of respondents you will need to include in the study, the questions to be asked, and the activities to be performed.
Here are some questions to ask yourself when outlining your objectives:
- Which product features do I want feedback on?
- What are the right questions that can effectively gauge user satisfaction?
- What research tools are the best choices to use for the testing?
- How long will the testing last?
- Will the participants be able to successfully finish the given tasks?
2.) Narrow Down Your Target Audience
You need to make sure that you’re recruiting the correct participants for your product testing. The quality of your study starts with relevant, qualified respondents. Recruit your participants based on the goals set for quality and accurate feedback. A screener questionnaire when done right will produce potential testers that will let you gain rich insight from your research.
3.) Choose The Right Location for Testing
Product testing has typically been done in a central location or within consumers’ homes.
Most companies prefer to conduct their product testing in a central location that can be a controlled environment, but with social distancing in place, many researchers are opting for a hybrid setup where a select number of in-person participants are in a central location and research stakeholders observe remotely. If you do determine that in-person focus groups or interviews work best for your objective, it is critical to use a service that can enable effective data gathering for product or device testing such as a video recording and streaming solution that allows in-person interviews to be recorded and streamed to remote observers while providing a close-up view of each respondent’s testing activities.
It is essential for remote viewers to receive clear visuals of the participants’ facial expressions, body language, and how they handle the product or device. This requires a tool or solution that can simultaneously and clearly show the respondents’ individual faces and their hands. It is also just as important to opt for a solution that can capture and produce crisp audio of the interviews or groups, especially as a result of social distancing requirements where participants may be wearing masks or sitting behind plexiglass.
Setting the stage for getting accurate feedback on how respondents – potential customers – use or consume the product or device is the goal. Otherwise, low-quality visual images, and audio video output will compromise the data and thus compromise the quality of the research and potentially product development.
For tests conducted within consumers’ homes, mobile research techniques can also be effective as they allow your participants to quickly record videos using a device readily available to them, enabling them to easily express their first impressions of the product or device.
4.) Generate Clear and Easy Questions and Tasks
Your questions and activities will significantly impact the quality of your participants’ responses. Ensure that questions are tailored according to the study objectives and cover all areas where information is needed. Design realistic and easy tasks to prevent participants from losing their patience and motivation. Keep in mind that although testing the product’s functionality is important, your goal is to test the participants’ overall experience with the product. You can do this by formulating questions based on the three stages of product testing: pre-consumption, consumption, and post-consumption.
- Pre-consumption
In this stage, ask questions that allow you to determine your participants’ first impressions of your product, including its packaging, design, feel, etc.
- Consumption
This stage is the most crucial part as it will provide in-depth consumer insights on how the product is utilized. In this stage, you can formulate questions that tell you more about the participant’s experience. How did they react while using the product? How easy was it to use? What activities did they do on their own with the product? What were the results of the tasks they were assigned?
Note again that the research tool you use during this stage must accurately capture the respondents’ facial expressions and body language while using or consuming the product.
- Post-consumption
In this stage, you can determine the participants’ overall assessment of the product. You can also ask questions that will help you decide if the product can compete with other brands.
Another thing to note is the number of questions to ask or activities to perform. It is important to be sure you have estimated the time for each and built that time into the research experience. More than one study has been conducted where the respondents were able to get through less than half of the questions or activities in the time allotted. Overextending the number of questions per test may cause your respondents to lose focus and provide half-hearted replies.
5.) Conduct Multiple Tests
It’s not enough to conduct just a single test, as this will result in limited feedback. The first test is likely to provide the product’s biggest pain points which will help considerably with design modifications. The more tests that are run, the more areas are likely to be found that can be tweaked for improvement. Additionally, conducting focus group testing months after designing the product may generate ideas for new features or improvements.