going to the user research store, anyone need anything?

insights that I couldn’t have otherwise gotten from a simple hallway testing session

FID 1580 | dad 2x. building SkillsEngine.com — product. design. art. code. philosophy. technology. economics. systems.

recently spent too much time at that store

I'm with you on usually not regretting it. My latest experience with a particular UXR platform has me feeling a bit jaded.

1. We do most of our "hallway" tests with a select group of "trusted" outside users and network advisors who represent different audience types. Then we do internal team hallway testing when features are in development and we are checking more for basic usability and flow.

2. We try to do some level of UX research and testing nearly every product development cycle (we do 6-week feature sprints, using Shape Up)—but we're a small team with limited resources. So we tried to scale user testing through Maze.co—it didn't prove useful. In particular, we used Maze for their "tester pool" and the ability to do rapid response tests with Maze testers (as they're promoting even in the url preview here). 

The feedback we got from Maze testers was garbage. Incoherent and/or clearly low effort responses we couldn't really use. Exhausted the team and burned cash/time.

UXR can definitely be a time-suck, but it's something I seldom regret.

Genuinely curious:
1. Do you do "hallway tests" with teammates, or people within your network but outside the org?
2. Would love to hear what spurred the research stint and why it felt like too much of a time sink