Ask for a usability test
Three synthetic personas walk your product on their own — software role-playing users, deciding and clicking for themselves. No human uses your product, and no one has measured how often these findings agree with what real users would do. Every run and every worklist carries the same stamp: synthetic; uncalibrated.
What comes back is a set of leads for your judgment, each carrying the persona's own words from the run.
One link. Point it at a publicly reachable page.
Every test runs a panel of three personas.
Read your test before it runs
This is what your personas will be told. They see this and the screen in front of them — nothing about your goals, and nothing about what you are hoping to find out.
Do not reload this page — this preview is held in your browser only, so reloading means filling the form in again.
The situation
The task
What we changed in your wording, and why
What we kept on purpose, and why
These phrases might look like they give something away. They do not — taking them out would break the test.
What we could not take out, and why
Taking this phrase out would change what your test asks somebody to do, so we left it in rather than change the test. Read it before you accept.
The person we would cast
One person, described so the run does not stall on somebody who would never be there. It is a casting note for this one test, never a description of the people who actually use your product.
What we had to assume
Your answers did not settle these. Read them — if one is wrong, tell us before this runs.
Notes on your brief
Nothing takes effect until you accept.
Accepted
Your test is with us. We will come back to you when the worklist is on its way. We do not put a time on that.
That did not go through
Your answers were not sent to us. Here is what needs fixing:
Your answers reached us, but we could not write your test. Nothing has run.
We wrote your test, then read it back the way a first-time user would meet it. As written, we do not trust it to run as a fair test of your product. Nothing has run. Here is what stopped us:
Before writing your test, we send one browser to your link to see whether a test could reach it. This time it could not get through. Nothing has run and no test was written. Here is what our browser met:
Fix what is named above and send it again.
This one is ours, not yours. We can see what happened and will come back to you.
Adjust the answers named above and send the form again — a changed answer writes a fresh test. If a problem is about something we wrote, the task, the situation or the person we would cast, then change any one of your answers, even a little, and send again. We write the whole test afresh from what you send.
If this is yours to change — a wall to open, a page to bring back — change it and send the same form again. We will check again from the start.