Launching products without proper user validation is risky in today's competitive digital landscape. While there are many approaches to prototype testing, we've identified three particularly effective methods that can significantly speed up your validation process and improve outcomes. The best thing with these is that you can run them online, allowing for a wider reach of users and much less effort in execution.
The Challenge with Traditional Prototype Testing
Traditional prototype testing typically involves scheduling one-on-one sessions where UX researchers meet users in person to observe them interacting with prototypes while gathering feedback. While valuable, this approach often means teams struggle with:
- Time-consuming recruitment processes
- Slow feedback cycles
- Limited access to representative users
- Resource-intensive testing sessions
- Difficulty scaling to continuous motion due to the above reasons
Modern online UX research platforms like Leanlab are changing this landscape by enabling faster, more efficient prototype testing without sacrificing insight quality. On the Leanlab platform, you can set up a private community of your users and invite them to unmoderated prototype tests with a low threshold and less time and effort than rearing everything with pen and paper. Below, we have explored 3 ways to leverage UX research platforms for faster and more intuitive user insights.
Market Benchmarking and Mystery Shopping in Prototype Testing
What It Is
Market benchmarking and mystery shopping are traditionally separate activities. Market benchmarking involves systematically analysing competitor solutions, user flows, and features to understand industry standards and best practices. Mystery shopping traditionally means having researchers pose as customers to evaluate services or products first-hand.
Today, digital user research platforms enable the combination of these approaches by directly involving real users in both activities. This provides richer insights and helps understand how users perceive and interact with existing solutions in your market. The advantage of digital UX research platforms like Leanlab is that you can use these methods without needing a physical presence.
Why It Matters
Users don't experience your product in isolation - their expectations are shaped by all digital experiences they encounter. For example, when Google Docs introduced automatic saving, it changed user expectations about how document editing should work across all platforms. By incorporating benchmarking and mystery shopping in your prototype testing process, you can:
- Understand current market standards
- Identify gaps in competitor offerings
- Learn from both good and bad examples
- Discover user expectations set by other services
- Find opportunities for differentiation
How to Do It
This is how you could do it with a modern UX research platform:
- Invite participants: Invite the appropriate participants from your private lab to collaborate with you on the mystery shopping tasks - usually 30-100 people representing 3-5 different user segments
- Create Structured Tasks: Provide users specific instructions for evaluating competitor products or similar experiences. For example, ask them to complete a particular flow across different services, such as account creation or checkout.
- Gather Visual Evidence: Have users share screenshots and images of their experience. This provides concrete examples of what works and what doesn't, rather than relying on memory-based feedback.
- Collect Multi-Format Feedback: Combine written feedback with visual examples. Ask users to:some text
- Document their step-by-step journey
- Highlight particularly good or confusing moments
- Share what they would expect to see
- Note any friction points or highlights
- Use Diary Studies: Enable users to document their experiences over time, which helps capture:some text
- Natural usage patterns
- Real-world context
- Evolving user needs
- Long-term pain points
- Encourage Examples: Ask users to share their great experiences in the space. This often reveals:some text
- Best-in-class features
- Preferred interaction patterns
- Innovative solutions from unexpected sources
One great thing with the Leanlab platform is that you can invite different users to different tasks simultaneously and have one user group doing one task whilst the other is completing something else. You can also mix and match qualitative and quantitative research methods to set up qualitative research tasks for small groups. Then, you run quantitative research with a larger pool of participants to have rich and deep qualitative data and broader data to quantify information quickly.
Rapid A/B Testing for Early Prototypes
What It Is
Early-stage A/B testing in prototype development differs from traditional A/B testing in live environments. Traditional A/B testing focuses on measuring metrics like conversion rates with live users, while prototype A/B testing or preference testing helps teams make informed design decisions before committing to development.
This method involves presenting users with different versions of design solutions, from early sketches to high-fidelity prototypes, to understand preferences, usability impacts, and potential issues before they become costly to fix.
Why It Matters
Making design decisions based on assumptions can lead to expensive mistakes. Early A/B testing:
- Validates design directions before significant investment
- Provides concrete data to support design decisions
- Helps resolve internal debates with user feedback
- Identifies potential issues before development
- Creates a foundation for design patterns
Best Practices
- Start Early:
- Test rough sketches and initial concepts
- Don't wait for perfect designs
- Use simple wireframes for quick feedback
- Test individual components as well as full flows
- Iterate based on feedback before detailed design
- Create Clear Distinctions:
- Ensure options have meaningful differences
- Test one significant variable at a time
- Make differences obvious enough for valid comparison
- Avoid mixing too many design elements
- Consider testing extreme versions to clarify preferences
- Gather Qualitative Insights:
- Include open-ended questions about preferences
- Ask about specific elements that influenced choices
- Explore the reasoning behind preferences
- Gather suggestions for improvements
- Document recurring themes in feedback
- Provide Context:
- Frame questions around specific use cases
- Give users realistic scenarios
- Explain the intended purpose
- Consider user goals and motivations
- Provide relevant background information
- Look Forward:
- Document insights for future reference
- Identify patterns in user preferences
- Build a library of tested solutions
- Share learnings across teams
- Use insights to inform design systems
Success Story
Stockmann, a multichannel retail company that offers a diverse and high-quality range of fashion, cosmetics and home products, used rapid A/B testing to optimise their login process. By testing multiple design variations early, they could identify and resolve potential usability issues before development. Being able to do prototype testing online within their online customer lab allowed them to do thorough A/B testing in a very tight timeframe and ship a much more user-friendly version to the development team. Read more about how Stockmann uses Leanlab to elevate their customer experience.
Unmoderated Testing of Functional Prototypes
What It Is
Unmoderated prototype testing represents a significant evolution in usability testing. Unlike traditional moderated sessions, where researchers guide users through tasks, unmoderated testing allows users to interact with prototypes independently in their natural environment. This approach provides both scalability and authentic user behaviour insights.
Why It Matters
Unmoderated prototype testing offers several unique advantages:
- Captures more natural user behaviour
- Eliminates potential researcher bias
- Enables testing with larger user groups
- Provides geographic and demographic flexibility
- Reduces resource requirements
Implementation Approach
- Crystal Clear Instructions:
- Write step-by-step task descriptions
- Avoid technical jargon
- Provide context for each task
- Include examples where helpful
- Consider multiple user skill levels
- Include Validation Checks:
- Add questions to verify task completion
- Include attention-check questions
- Verify understanding of instructions
- Track task success rates
- Balance Feedback Types:
- Combine quantitative and qualitative metrics
- Include qualitative feedback opportunities
- Use rating scales for specific aspects
- Track user paths and behaviours
- Capture Initial Reactions:
- Ask for first impressions
- Document pain points
- Gather emotional responses
- Seek Improvement Ideas:
- Ask specific improvement questions
- Gather feature suggestions
- Explore alternative approaches
- Identify missing functionality
- Collect prioritisation feedback
Key Considerations When Doing Unmoderated Prototype Testing
- Ensure prototypes are stable and self-explanatory
- Plan for varying technical abilities
- Consider device and browser compatibility
- Prepare for unexpected user behaviours
- Design clear success metrics
Conclusion
While the methods presented here represent just a part of the prototype testing toolkit, they offer a practical starting point for teams looking to improve their validation process. The key benefits of using digital UX research platforms like Leanlab for prototype testing are:
Speed and Efficiency
- Complete testing cycles in as little as a week or two
- Gather feedback from multiple users simultaneously
- Reduce reliance on time-intensive interviews
Early Validation Benefits
- Test concepts before significant investment
- Identify issues at the sketch stage
- Minimise expensive late-stage revisions
Continuous Learning Advantage
- Build a repository of user preferences
- Apply insights across projects
- Improve initial prototype quality
Organisations using this approach report:
- 3-4x increase in testing frequency
- Significant reduction in development risks
- Higher team confidence in design decisions
- Better alignment between user needs and final products
The future of prototype testing is moving toward continuous, iterative validation rather than occasional large-scale studies. By adopting these methods and supporting them with the right tools, you can stay ahead of the curve and consistently deliver better user experiences.
