Figma Prototype Testing with Qwary

Get Real UX Testing of Your Figma Prototypes With Qwary

In a sea of native apps and progressive web apps, user experience is the factor that can make or break your project.

On one hand, great UX means that your project is easy to use, intuitive, and enjoyable to interact with. Higher user satisfaction, meaningful engagement, and retention are the hallmarks of a good UX.

On the other hand, a poor UX will make your project frustrating and difficult to use, which will lead to users abandoning it.

With the above in mind, how can you make sure that your project will deliver great UX upon release or deployment?

You could be emulating a great user interface such as the Outlook app for Android and still deliver a deficient UX unless you can get user feedback from real users in the early stages of the project, and you want to do this at the prototyping stage so that you can easily "get back to the drawing board."

UX testing is the process of evaluating the usability of a product or service by testing it with real users. It is a crucial aspect of the development process because it lets you optimize website and identify usability issues early on. This process can be completed at any stage of the design process, but it is most effective during the prototyping stage. A comprehensive usability test with Qwary can inject the dose of reality you need to boost the UX of your projects.

Figma Prototype Testing With Qwary

Let's say you are working on a new AI chatbot project that will take advantage of an API similar to ChatGPT. You already completed the tasks of gathering and defining the requirements for the app, so you have a good idea about the features, functionality, and target audience. Figma is one of your design tools, so this is where you create a few Android prototype versions. You are now ready to test Figma prototypes, but who is going to provide user feedback on the UI and UX?

If you have been involved in app and front-end development for some time, chances are that you've heard an expression to the effect of designers being the worst testers. There is such a thing as designer bias; it is generally related to working in the field and therefore overlooking usability issues. Designers may also be biased towards the look and feel of projects completed by their peers and associates, which means that having your GitHub followers or Slack contacts test your Figma prototypes is a terrible idea unless they are the sole target audience of the project.

So, who should test your Figma prototypes?

The answer is: Real users who can give you the most honest and unbiased UX feedback. Your ideal UX prototype test should include elements such as user interviews, video interviews, and other tools that can help you and your team identify pain points and other crucial UX aspects that are usually skipped over during the design process, and which should not carry over to the development stage.

Qwary is a cloud-based usability testing platform that allows designers to share their Figma prototypes with real end-users and collect feedback through surveys, interviews, A/B testing, and other methods. In essence, Qwary can help designers focus on what works and what doesn't for the UX of their projects.

Actionable insights are delivered through machine learning algorithms that generate sentiment reports and point out emerging trends.

How Figma Prototype Testing Works With Qwary

As can be expected from modern cloud platforms, Qwary requires that you start by creating a new account so that you can create new UX testing projects.

Starting from scratch means selecting an option to configure concept and usability testing sessions, and Qwary provides you with a template to this effect. Once you name the project, you can add the URL of your Figma prototype, which should have been previously set to public.
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Qwary UX surveys can be shared with the users involved in testing through unique URLs generated by the system. You can now open the usability survey associated with the prototype so that you can write prompts for the user to launch it.

Options include:

• Labeling of prompts and buttons to guide testers.
  
• Launching as a banner or text prompt.
  
• Opening surveys in new browser tabs with an option of going full-screen.
  
• Adding events as triggers.
  
• Defining the audience.
  
• Recording the entire interaction or just portions.
  
• Scheduling the date and time when the test should be sent.

Circling back to our example of an AI chatbot project, when the UX tester receives the Qwary link, your Figma prototype will load on a side panel of the browser viewport, and the survey instructions will be displayed on the other side. You can request typed answers, recorded audio comments, or video reactions; the options are easy to see, and the workflow includes getting permission from testers before they are recorded.

After users indicate on the Qwary platform that they have completed the task according to instructions, they can be presented with qualifying questions such as "How simple did you find the previous task?"

Evaluations may be graded on scales such as 1 for "Extremely Dissatisfied" and 5 for "Extremely Satisfied."

You can also provide testers with web form fields so that they can enter written opinions about each task they complete.

Even Apple Has Previously Succumbed to UX Issues

When thinking about technology and digital products that are widely considered to be the epitome of UI and UX design, one of the first brand names that comes to mind is Apple. Who can forget the highly intuitive iPod wheel that combines emerging touch technology with traditional buttons? We can add macOS, the iPhone, GarageBand, and certainly iOS to the list of Apple hits that denote UI and UX excellence, but the company also has a small graveyard of products that succumbed to usability issues.

Historically, the Apple Lisa computer that predated the Macintosh had a flashy graphical user interface with plenty of 1980s aesthetic appeal, but the project was shelved after a prototype test revealed how difficult it was for new users.

In the mid-1990s, Apple released a couple of duds: The Newton personal digital assistant and the PiPP!N video gaming console. We could argue that these devices may have been ahead of their time, but Apple's corporate history reveals that both received poor user feedback.

In 2012, a similar situation resulted in the discontinuation of MobileMe, a pioneering cloud service that would not have passed a usability test these days.

As you can see, even the best companies in the world can release products with usability issues if they don't test their designs early on. This is why it is so important for you as an app designer to test UX at the prototyping stage. By getting UX feedback from real users, you can identify issues before getting to the development stage, thus allowing you to make changes to your prototypes before it's too late, and Qwary makes the UX testing process easy to configure and manage.