Step 5: How to organize your findings | Kickstarting User Testing for your Security Product

Welcome to Step Five of our series on how to kickstart user testing for your security product.

‍

• Step 1: How to choose what to test
• Step 2: How to find the right people
• Step 3: How to set up the session
• Step 4: How to conduct your first session
• Step 5: How to organize your findings ←This post
• Step 6: How to present to the team
• Bonus Step: How to get buy-in for more research

‍

We’ve discussed how user testing is a critical part of developing any successful product. But simply conducting user tests is not enough - you need to be able to analyze the results effectively and present the key insights in a compelling way. 

‍

This post will walk through a step-by-step process to get the most value from user testing and enable data-driven product decisions.

Step 1 – Comprehensive Data Collection

The first key step to analyzing your user testing session is to gather qualitative and quantitative data during each user session. While the data might looks super messy at first, getting your insights on paper is critical. We typically write a handfull of notes during the session, but take detailed notes while watching the session recording. When taking notes, pay close attentions to user behavior, comments, pain points, and anything else of interest. 

We encourage you to review the session recording a few days after testing. A little bit of a break can give fresh perspective on the session and can uncover insights you may have initially missed. The goal is to collect end-to-end data that captures the full user experience.

‍

‍

Hint: A great way to get your team involved is to take notes on the testing session in real time. Each team member will use sticky notes to jot down compelling quotes, impactful observations, and patterns they notice. They will label positives and negatives with symbols like + and -. This process of consolidating feedback in one place makes it easier to spot trends and themes.

‍

‍

Step 2 – Organize Insights Visually‍

Next, organize the data by creating a feedback wall - a board, wall, or spreadsheet where you can visually map all the key insights from testing.

‍

‍

Hint: Don’t worry if the data seems chaotic at first. After reading over the stickies, you will be able to group like ideas and remove duplicate ideas.

‍

Step 3 – Prepare an Impactful Presentation

Now comes the critical step of preparing to present the results to stakeholders in a clear, impactful way. Make sure to connect insights directly to the goals and objectives for the product or feature being tested. 

Don’t just present the data - translate it into actionable recommendations. For example, “Users struggled to complete Task X” could be followed by “Redesign Task X workflow based on observations.”

We’ll discuss how to present your finding to the team in our next post in this series.

If you need help, ask us anything at hello@sodiumhalogen.com