The digital agency that collects ammunition for their UX decisions with Preely

We recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Julie Schramm Rasmussen and Carl-Johan Kristiansson – both UX Specialists and consultants at the full service digital agency Peytz & Co.

They work with several large-scale clients on a daily basis, and uses Preely weekly to get quick and easily implementable feedback for their clients. In this interview, you will learn more about how Preely can be used in an agency-based context to test ideas and communicating the value of UX work.

How do you use Preely at Peytz & Co in your everyday work?
Julie: At Peytz & Co we work in a very agile manner. We work intensely with clients, where we each week work in sprint-like conditions. It puts a lot of pressure on us to continuously and repetitively test our ideas and designs on real users. This is why we need tools that provide us with quick and easily implementable feedback. Among other tools and methods, we use Preely.

We use Preely when we conduct weekly usability tests on different projects with everything from 15-30 participants.

With Preely we get fast and easily workable feedback on simple things. It means that we quickly can decide if we should continue working with a specific idea or discard it. The ability to conduct many fast and small tests gives us a strong sense of clarity and direction – without having to devote too much time and resources to it.

Carl-Johan: We work in an user-centric way and Preely is one of the tools that help us optimize the usability of our solutions according to the needs of the users. We can continuously show our clients what works and what doesn’t work by supporting our claims with relevant numbers and data.

Additionally, it is a strength that we quickly can access a group of participants when complexities happen and when we need tangibility to base our design decisions on.

How is Preely different from other types of user testing methods?<
Julie: The main thing is the amount of time that goes into getting tangible feedback from Preely compared to other techniques. When we conduct the typical think-aloud-test, we always conduct them remote and moderated. This means that we spend a large amount of time in front of the camera.

Another thing is what we want to accomplish with the test; do we need a detailed understanding of a users interaction with our design, or do we need to know if the user can navigate to a specific page or find the green button? Preely is exceptionally good for testing the latter: does it work or does it not work.

Carl-Johan: Another thing is to process and analyze the tests to get the results. It takes a lot of time to analyze 30 think-aloud-tests. With Preely we can get 30 test completions and have the results ready to support our decisions in an instant.

Does this mean Preely is a substitute for think-aloud tests?
Julie: No. think-aloud-tests are critical for our work, and something that we always use at some point in our process. And so are card sorting, tree testing, surveys, concept testing and the rest of the methods that we use. The advantage of using Preely opposed to think-aloud testing lies in the speed and simplicity in which we can get feedback on our ideas and designs – validation, rejection or improvement.

With Preely we easily get 20 answers to a test, and that is enough for us to validate if something works or not. When we need to dig deeper, we typically conduct think-aloud-tests. This means that our choice is always dependent on the type of output we are aiming to achieve.

What and when do you typically test with Preely?
Carl-Johan: We use Preely to test simple flows, where we do not have an overly complicated prototype yet. The things we test the most are stuff like task flows and CTAs, visual hierarchy, navigation, does the user find the right exits and so on.

We test during the whole design process – from when we have wireframes or prototypes from Axure or Sketch until we have an almost finished UI Design from Photoshop. The earlier we can get the opportunity to test the better. With Preely we can start testing early, which gives us more clarity of the direction we are headed early in the process.

What have you accomplished with the help of Preely so far?
Carl-Johan: Improved a ton of ideas, shot down plenty and validated even more! And most importantly, we have done so in a fast and easy manner that saved us time and money in the end.

Julie: We are now able to show data every time we go into a status meeting with our clients. It support our claims and helps us to ensure our clients that we are working in the right direction.

As we often work with public tenders, it has also been coming in handy when we are bidding on new projects. It’s great that we can test concepts and get real data to back up our offers. I think it gives us a better chance of winning the assignment.