What I learn from my first Guerrilla Testing

Do you know that the longer we work on a product, we’ll fall in love with it? We no longer can see the bad of it, we just can see its good, beautiful, and cool side. Sadly, we must find the pain point at any cost to improve the product, but we can’t.

To tackle this, we need fresh eyes to help us. A quick and cheap way to meet them is going outside and conduct guerrilla testing.

Guerrilla testing is a kind of usability testing where we ask people in a cafe to try our product and share their thought. Why cafe? Usually, people in the cafe is not in a hurry. You don’t want to disturb a walker that late to their office, do you?

I’m currently working on the online invitations web and want to make sure the web usable. My main goal is to answer “Can users browse, select, and buy an invitation from my web?”. So, I conduct guerilla testing to answer it.

At the first time, I think guerilla testing is easy. But the pressure comes when you sit at the cafe. There are many people with their business. When I look at their face feels like written: “Don’t disturb”. I realize that their time is very valuable. So, I must prepare it well first so not wasting their time.

Preparation makes my heartbeat getting slower and I know I’m ready. Now, it’s time to aiming around. Everybody looks busy and I’m afraid to disturb them. But, wait any longer will make them go home. I force my leg to stand and come to the next table.

There is 4 person. I invite my manager to accompany me. My manager introducing us. Who we are, what our goal, how they can help us, how we say thanks, and ask for willingness. One person agreed and the testing begins. I’m so surprised by how he uses the web. Back and forth at the wrong page and take a long time to arrive at the desired page.

The way I think the users use the web and the actual is so different things. It finishes after 30 minutes. Longer than we expected.

This session has a sad story. There is 2 person in that table and both are agreed. One bullet hit 2 birds I think. After a few minutes, she uses the web, there is a vital page that can’t be accessed. “What the hell happen?” I think. The device at my hand, try to change the connection but keep the same. Forced I stop the testing and apologize her. She rejects the compensation, I feel guilty. But, nothing to lose because I find a valuable bug.

This session conduct in a different place with a different friend. Previous, my manager does the introduction but now is my chance. My friend just watches me and give me feedback later. We come to a table with 2 people. Somehow, my introduction a bit hard to understand by them. The testing done well but the compensation is rejected (again). She said that she not so busy. Thanks to her and there is feedback from my friend. He said that my talk is too formal that makes people hard to understand. Thanks (a cup of coffee) to my friend.

Experience is the best guru. So, I hope my experience can be a guru for you. Here is a takeaway from those three sessions.

Is there any question don’t be hesitate to text me. I love to discuss UX. Thanks for reading my story. Hope to see you again in the other stories.

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