jamasUX Testing by Zalando
I’m very fascinated about the team-working of Zalando’s UserLab Team and for this I want explain the new User Experience research that they approach to their stakeholder that supports the flexibility of their agile development processes. I share the ideas about this implementation of development about the agile UX testing but for first a short introcustion on UserLab’s role at Zalando:
Usualy day business of the Zalando‘s UserLab Team
The UserLab is the place where Zalando show the most recent features and innovations to users before going live or before being A/B tested. In the UserLab the team-working talk to customers, observe their online behavior when browsing on Zalando, we analyze use cases, and eventually problems they give recommendations to the product teams.
They apply a lot of different methods like interviews, focus groups, eye tracking, surveys or card sorting.
Zalando is based on user centered design approach where combining qualitative (subjective) and quantitative (objective) user research helps developers, designers and product managers to make the right UI decisions and consequently for good usability, high relevance and positive user experiences for our websites and apps.
So the UserLab try to be as an interface between the people who develop (developers, designers, product manager, etc…) the new features and the people who use the features (Users), and make sure that the users’ characteristics, goals, expectations and preferences are considered in the product development phases.
Experiences, challenges and goals
In the last two years this process in Zalando have had a positive impact on the user centered design, to make sure the qualitative user testing become a prerequisite for the product development.The Product teams appreciate the possibility of outsourcing user research to us and receiving a detailed analysis, however need to make a quicker design decision than a thorough usability analysis of the results of 8-10 complex users interviews allows.
So they sat down, reflected on past projects, made a list of requiriments thought about how a new, more agile testing approach could meet these challenges.
So this is the Zalando’s mission statement for agile testing:
- Possibility for quick, resource-efficient and focused user research of high quality
- Reconcile user feedback with agile product development and establish user testing as a regular part of the rhythm
- Make results and insights more tangible, work on solutions instead of producing findings
- Provide regular performance measurement and determine success of recommendations
- Effectively intertwine agile product development and user experience methods
- Raise awareness for benefits of combining qualitative testing and quantitative testing
- Create structures that make it easier for the product teams to develop products with having the user in mind –> develop towards a value proposition rather than a set of functions
- Empower the product teams to do their own UX testing and provide advice wherever needed
- Make it possible to start working right after testing without having to wait for the analysis
- And consequently: help to produce products that fulfill Zalando’s business goals
Agile Testing Principles at Zalando
Having these goals in mind, they built a project structure in which user testing is planned, conducted and analyzed within not more than four days.
Collaboration and Participation
If they want agile testing projects to be successful, it is essential that user researcher and product teams conduct user research together. This means that product teams take over more responsibility in testing and analysis than they did in the past. This shift has to happen for a couple of reasons:
- It strengthens the product teams’ empathy for the user and bridges
- Consequently increasing the quality of learning
- Seeing a user fail to understand the product
- It creates awareness for the possibilities and constraints of qualitative testing (which makes our work a little easier)
- It facilitates team discussions about the KPIs of the product
Focus
Quickly validate assumptions and move on with the next step in their product development. Short and efficient meetings and a brief product profile (‘product mapping’) that is filled out at the beginning of each agile testing project make sure that the team focuses on the most important research questions and hypotheses.
Iteration
Implementing testing on a regular basis makes sure that teams show their product to typical users from time to time.
Lo-fi prototypes
The testing object only needs to provide the core features for testing the assumptions about the user’s behavior or attitude. This can even be done with sketches, wireframes or paper-prototypes.
Transparency
The Zalando User’s Lab goal is to make planning, testing and results transparent to every one of the own as well as other product teams. Now, after the first couple of agile testing projects, they realized that they aren’t quite where they want to be yet in providing transparency, but they have some ideas that will soon be tested.
Principles put into practice
