How: Prepare tasks, questions, and background brief with great attention before sending them to remote respondents who will carry out your test while being video recorded or screen recorded, but also unmoderated and unsupervised only with the help of your initial brief. Search for respondents in relevant forums or use one of many online remote user testing services.
Why: Remote user tests can be conducted by users all over the world as long as an internet connection is available. With the right setup, they allow finding relevant respondents in your target audience fast and easily. As remote usability tests are unmoderated, many user tests can be conducted at the same time. This allows for rapid feedback from potentially hundreds of sources in a matter of hours rather than days.
Validating the solution
When trying to validate your product or solution, whether remote or in person, you are testing whether your product is solving the right problem in the most effective way. Most likely, you will not find perfect product-solution fit the first time around. That is OK and what to expect.
By iterating, tweaking, and reacting to your findings – pivoting or even shutting down if you have to - you will slowly, but steadily progress toward finding problem-solution fit.
When you are starting to see strong positive evidence from users in your target segment, consider problem-solution fit discovered and start moving on to test for market demand or willingness to pay.
Remote testing today
Remote testing has become the default for most product teams. Video calls make moderated sessions easy to run with participants anywhere, and unmoderated platforms such as Maze, Lyssna and UserTesting let people complete tasks on their own time while their screen and voice are recorded. AI has changed what happens next:
- Analysis is no longer the bottleneck. Platforms transcribe sessions, flag moments where people struggled and summarize answers across participants. That makes it realistic to watch for patterns across 20 sessions instead of five. Watch the clips behind each summary before acting on it; a summary can tell you that people hesitated, not why.
- Unmoderated tests can ask follow-up questions. AI moderators can probe an answer (“What did you expect to happen there?”) in a way a fixed questionnaire cannot. They still miss what a skilled facilitator would notice, such as body language or a remark made in passing.
- The prototype can be real. AI app builders make it cheap to test a working prototype instead of static screens, so you can observe real input and real errors.
- Check that your participants are real. Paid panels attract professional testers, and some answers are now written by AI. Screen carefully, include a question that requires a specific personal experience, and discard sessions that sound generic.
Popular tools
The tools below will help you with the Remote User Testing play.
-
Maze
Unmoderated testing of Figma and coded prototypes, with an AI moderator for follow-up questions and AI summaries of results.
-
Lyssna
Formerly UsabilityHub. Quick and affordable prototype tests, preference tests and surveys with its own participant panel.
-
UserTesting
Watch recordings of people from your target audience using your product, with AI-generated highlights and summaries.
-
Lookback
Moderated and unmoderated remote sessions with screen, face and voice recording, timestamped notes and transcripts.
-
Prolific
Recruit vetted research participants quickly when you have no audience of your own.
Real life Remote User Testing examples
Every.org
Every.org improved donation conversions by 29.5% using remote user testing. They identified donation process issues through interviews, session recordings, and A/B tests, leading to a streamlined flow and added FAQs, enhancing user understanding and experience.
Source: 6 user testing examples to help you create better products
ElectricFeel
This company offers a software platform for managing fleets of shared electric bicycles and mopeds. They conducted remote user testing to streamline the process for new riders signing up on their app. This involved testing with fleet managers and iterating designs based on feedback, ultimately leading to an improved user experience.
Source: 5 Real-life usability testing examples & approaches to apply
Remote User Testing is one of the cards in this deck
Get this experiment in the Validation Patterns card deck.Compare experiments and choose what to test next with your team.
$129 · Printed deck + digital edition
Get your deck!Related plays
- A Lean Approach To Product Validation by Smashing Magazine