Get usability feedback with fivesecondtest.com

As a designer it’s usually quite hard to get constructive feedback on a design. All the people I know are either friends or relatives who only say, ‘Yeah that looks good’, or ‘Oh I like that’. Fivesecondtest.com aims to fix this problem by allowing you to upload any design and running a series of tests. The service is free to signup however you can buy tokens to allow further customisation of tests.

I happened to stumble upon the site and added a usability test for the homepage of papermashup.com. It was completely effortless to setup and took about 20 seconds.

Setting up a test

Signup for an account, login and click ‘Create a new test’ on the homepage. Unexpectedly the site’s usability is amazing. you’ll see an overlay like below where you can upload your design and select the type of test you want to perform.

Managing your tests

Once you’ve created your tests you can go ahead and manage them to see the response and feedback. It’s worth noting that people voluntarily leave their feedback and if you do signup you’re encouraged to help other designers out. You can also set your test up so non-logged in users give feedback.

Gathering feedback

There are two types of test you can do, either a click test or memory test. With the click test the user has to click on elements of your design and label what each section is. with the memory test you have a certain amount of time to remember everything you can about the design, you then have to list the main features. The click test even displays the data on a click map so you can see hotspots where users have clicked as shown below.

Conclusion

I was really impressed with fivesecondtest.com, it gave me the opportunity to not only get free user feedback from like minded designers but also allowed me to help others and give my feedback. All in all i’d recommend fivesecondtest.com to anyone!