How to get insights from a usability test?

Question

I am new in the UX world, as practice I have conducted a usability test, but I am having problems when identifying insights.

I have used an Affinity Diagram to organize my observations and come un with some patterns. A pattern I have identified is:

4 of 5 users were cofused about how to make a schedule from the home screen

A possible insight may be:

For most of the users is not clear how to schedule a babysitter from the home screen

What do you think? do you have a way to indentify insights?

Answer 1

Your design insight could be "Users need a new way to schedule from home screen". However, it could be considered too specific to be an insight and would more be called a "finding".

There is no precise definition of an insight, it is a statement that summarize research and that could have an impact. To know if it is an insight, ask these three questions :

• Does it say something about the attitude, behaviour, needs or context of your users in general (i.e. is true, regardless of your product or solution)?
• Is it a fundamental principle you’ve discovered, like a behavioural or design pattern?
• Does it say something about your brand, product or service in its entirety and not just a small part of it?

Can you answer at least one by "yes" ? It is an insight.

(source : https://www.reveall.co/blog/how-to-write-valuable-user-insights)

From a usability test, you can have different types of insight depending on the nature of the study : quantitative or qualitative. In either, there is a ton of information, findings. For my part, to find insights, I start by sorting the problems by severity and frequency and look at the overall results.

Here are the problem severity from usability.gov :

• Critical: If we do not fix this, users will not be able to complete the scenario.
• Serious: Many users will be frustrated if we do not fix this; they may give up.
• Minor: Users are annoyed, but this does not keep them from completing the scenario. This should be revisited later.

(source : https://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/reporting-usability-test-results.html)

You can also use the rainbow sheet template to visually identify the more frequent issues :

Answer 2

Update, I just found new definitions of insight, fact, recommandation and experiment in a Atomic research conference of Daniel Pidcock. It can be useful.

"For most of the users is not clear how to schedule a babysitter from the home screen" is a an observation, so it is also a fact.

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Experiments “We did this…”

Facts “…and we found out this…”

Insights “…which makes us think this…”

Recommendations “…so we’ll do that.”

What is Atomic UX Research? Daniel Pidcock

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FACT

What we learned

QUOTE

“I can’t find the invoice section, surely it should be here? [points to profile dropdown]”

OR

OBSERVATION

Participant 3 took 6 mins total to find the invoice section and ended up in profile settings four times.

OR

STATISTIC

14% of support calls are clients looking for copies of their invoice

SHOULD BE:

• Unbiased and hold no assumptions
• Short enough to read in a few seconds
• Contain or tagged with how it was learned and what contex

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INSIGHT

Why we think we found this

CONTEXT

Customers can’t find invoices

AND/OR

CAUSE

…because they see invoices as related to their personal paid account rather than the product…

AND/OR

EFFECT

…so they call the contact centre for help.

SHOULD BE:

• Short enough to read in a few seconds
• Have enough context to be understood by itself
• Clearly defined relevance (such as a client or feature)

CAN BE:

• PRINCIPLE - Have relevance to as wide an audience as possible
• STRATEGIC - Help us understand a wide subject
• TACTICAL - Only relevant for specific context such as a feature