Conducting usability research when you’re low on money and time? Guerrilla testing might be the perfect option.
Over the past several months, I’ve accumulated some experience running guerrilla testing in our startup. As is typical for startups, we’re conservative with our spending and look for ways to save wherever we can. Guerrilla testing allowed us to gain valuable insights into our product and make informed decisions, rather than relying on intuition and guesswork – all with minimal investment.
In this article, I’ll share tips and insights into guerrilla testing: how to conduct it effectively, and how to avoid the common pitfalls that come with this method.
Let’s start with the basics.
Guerrilla usability testing is a quick, low-cost method for getting real user feedback on your product. You approach people – usually in public places – and ask them to complete simple tasks while interacting with your product. This method is widely used by startups and smaller companies that want to gain insights into their product without investing in more formal, costly usability research.
The main advantage? You reach people who haven’t seen your product before and may not even know about your company, making it perfect for fresh perspectives.
But what exactly do you test? Typically, the goals of guerrilla testing are to assess how intuitive and user-friendly certain parts of your product are. You’re looking for friction points – places where new users struggle, get confused or fail to complete tasks. Whether it’s testing a specific flow, a new feature, or even just a landing page, the idea is to observe real user behaviour in an authentic setting. Sessions are usually short, lasting 5-10 minutes, and focus on one or two specific tasks.
It’s an easy way to validate design decisions or spot usability issues early on, before dedicating more time and resources to building out features that might need improvement.
Now that you’ve decided you want to conduct guerrilla testing, what do you do next? Well, the key to effective sessions is being thoroughly prepared.
Before you start, make sure you’re well-prepared for the session:
Approaching random strangers can feel scary, especially if you're worried about rejection. However, in my experience, rejection is rare. Out of dozens of attempts, only a couple of people declined to help.
Here are a few strategies to increase your chances of success:
The timing of your guerrilla test is critical. You want to catch people when they have a few spare moments:
If you're scouting a location for your test, try to predict when people there are most likely to be free and approachable. Aim to avoid interrupting them during high-focus activities.
While guerrilla testing is cheap and quick, it comes with the potential for biases, particularly in the sample of people you test.
Testing in the same place at the same time can result in a uniform pool of respondents. For example, if you’re testing in an office, participants may share similar job roles, tech familiarity, and work experiences. While that might be ideal for certain types of corporate products, it’s not suitable if you’re building something for a broader audience.
To get more varied feedback, seek out people with different backgrounds. Gender, ethnicity, and age diversity can help provide a more balanced perspective. Don’t be afraid to approach people who might seem outside of your usual comfort zone. If you feel more comfortable approaching certain types of people (like I naturally do with younger women), make an effort to step outside your comfort zone for better test results.
After conducting your guerrilla testing sessions, the real work begins – analyzing the feedback and turning insights into actionable improvements. Here’s how to approach the analysis phase:
Guerrilla usability testing is a budget-friendly, practical way to test your product with fresh eyes. However, you need to stay mindful of the challenges: respect participants’ time with short, focused sessions, mitigate potential biases by varying your respondent pool and push past any fear of rejection. Make sure to prioritise your findings, too – not all feedback is created equal, and not all inputs from your respondents should lead to a change in your product.
Ultimately, the insights you’ll gather far outweigh the initial awkwardness or effort of approaching strangers. Over time, you’ll find your rhythm with this method and continuously improve your testing process. So don’t hesitate – get out there and start learning from real users. Good luck!
Hey, I’m Valeria! Thanks for reading my article; I'd love to hear your feedback in the comments. On HackerNoon, I am sharing insights on product management, product design, and sustainability, so stay tuned for more. See you in the next one! 👋