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When do you think is the perfect time to conduct usability testing on your beta testing period? Is it at the early stage, before they get their hands on the product? Or in the middle of the beta testing period? or should it be by the end of it?

And, any suggestion on what to do besides usability testing during beta testing period?

I have a plan on doing satisfaction survey and feedback interview so far.

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Technically speaking, at no time, because usability testing comes BEFORE beta. However, if you didn't do usability testing before this stage, then I'd recommend you to do it right at the beginning to avoid contamination and confound variables such as Hawthorne effect. This is specially true if your product's features are somehow special or representing new unknown scenarios for the user.

This being said, it's true that if you do continuous research, you can do usability testing at every phase or stage, even on gamma, or even after release. But this is not common, and unless you have an endless budget, it's very impractical. That's why usability testing happens at the beginning (right after prototype stage). Just imagine building something and only start usability testing after completion, just to find out you wasted a lot of time for nothing!

Anyways, for reference, remember this: usability testing is about the user being able to use a feature; beta testing is about whether the user is going to use the feature.

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  • Thank you for your explanation. I'm really a newbie here in the world of interaction design. But, if you were to be put in my position, where you are a new worker given a project, and the project is ready to be released for beta-user, what would you try to gain from your beta user in term of data? Aug 18, 2017 at 9:04
  • Again: if you didn't do usability testing, do it right now, the sooner the better. If it's in beta, so be it, it's not the best, but is better than nothing, still have a chance to discover any issue before gamma or final release
    – Devin
    Aug 18, 2017 at 15:05
  • thankyou! will try applying it by the start of the period :D best of luck. Aug 21, 2017 at 5:27

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