Last week, Danish online IT magazine Version 2 published an article on the challenges of creating great user experiences for users of online accounting software who basically hate accounting.
Read a translated abstract of the article in the following:
"Happy users are good ambassadeurs"
Guerilla user testing is just one of the methods, the Debitoor User Experience team applies to keep the user interface up-to-date. But how do you go about creating great user experiences when most people use online accounting and invoicing software out of pure necessity rather than desire?
This issue has taken up a lot of time with the User Experience - or UX - team of Debitoor.
"It can be partially solved with great web design, but it's also about communication and the way the program interacts with the user", explains Mette Walsted, head of UX & Design at Debitoor.
Users on video is an eye opener
Mette's UX & Design team of 5 employees work towards the common goal of achieving happy, satisfied customers.
This requires the use of quite a set of tools:
"We test a lot with users in their own environment. A tool like usertesting.com, for instance, which walks the user through a specific workflow while documenting their actions through a webcam, is super useful to us.
This way of testing gives us some very valuable information about how users interact with the software. Plus it's super easy to share with the developers, so they can see any potential issues for themselves", Mette says.
Engaging users and building communities
Debitoor's UX & Design team also recruits test users on the street:
"Right now we're looking at good ways of getting new users started. We refer to it as 'guerilla user testing', when we go to Berlin and rent an office among 300 freelancers.
We then invite potential users to try out specific areas of the software and shoot them on video while they interact and engage with the software. This gives us some super valuable feedback and a very concrete image of who we're targeting," Mette says.
To engage users on a daily basis, Debitoor used the third-party plugin UserVoice, which allows the user to give direct feedback and add their suggestions such as "An option to use multiple currencies". Other users can then comment on suggestions and vote for them, influencing their priority in development.
Full article available on Version2 (in Danish).
