Tasks that are not well-crafted can result in ambiguous outcomes, thus complicating the how you analyze and identify usability problems. This article is designed to assist you in creating effective usability test tasks that yield valuable feedback from your testers.

Understanding User Interactions

Before creating your test, it's important to understand how real world people interact with your product. Consider these questions:
  • Which main actions need to be performed by users?
  • What are the key goals of your business?
  • What insights do you want to learn from usability testing?
Answering these questions will help guide you to pinpoint essential user actions and design your tests tasks.

Creating Clear and Concise Tasks

When crafting your usability testing tasks, follow these best practices:
  • Use one-sentence tasks: Keep each task simple and to the point.
  • Ensure tasks align with user goals: Focus on real user actions, such as signing up, searching for information, or completing a purchase.
  • Avoid guiding testers: Refrain from using specific terms or labels present on your website or app. For instance, instead of “Click on the ‘Sign Up’ button,” prefer “Register an account.”

Examples of Well-Written Tasks

  • Find a product you are interested in and add it to your cart.
  • Find where to sign-up for an account.
  • Try to contact customer support using the website.

Improving Tasks with Context

To ensure meaningful responses, usability tasks should be framed within realistic scenarios. These provide context and help testers approach tasks as real users would.

Example Scenario

❌ Poor Task: Locate the 'Help Center' section.
✅ Better Task: You are experiencing an issue with defective product you received and have now found the company website. Find a way to contact customer support.

Conducting a Homepage Tour

Inspired by Steve Krug, a "homepage tour" is a straightforward yet productive usability testing method. It involves asking testers to explore your homepage and describe what they understand about the site.
Example of a Homepage Tour:
  • Take a look at the homepage and describe what you think this website is about.
  • Does anything stand out to you?
  • Without navigating away from this page, what can you do here?
This approach helps assess whether users can quickly grasp the purpose and functionality of your website.

Final Tips

  • Keep instructions clear and unbiased.

  • Focus on real-world user behavior.

  • Avoid unnecessary details that might confuse testers.

By following these best practices, you can create usability testing tasks that lead to actionable insights, ultimately improving the user experience of your product.

Want to learn more or have questions? Please visit our Blog article How to Write Better Tasks to Improve Your Usability Testing or contact support@userbrain.com