Testing your ideas-turned-prototypes with the people who will use them is a crucial design step.

End user testing with young children and their families can inspire fresh thinking about your work and make a good idea even better. This section will help you share your ideas and gather feedback.

The term ‘testing’ might sound formal, but it really doesn’t need to be—it’s all about getting a prototype of your idea in front of the people that will use it early, so you can avoid spending a lot of time and resources developing a solution that misses the mark.

The feedback you receive on your ideas will help you focus on solutions that really work.

Setting up a Testing Plan

With your project team, discuss and decide your answer to the following questions:

• Who are the testers you will need to talk with to better understand how your idea will work?

• Where will you find those people and how will you arrange 15 minutes to test with them?

• How will you describe your idea and the problem the prototype is trying to address?

• What do you most want to learn about the prototype?

• Are there any specific questions do you want to ask testers?

Record the group’s responses to each question—this will be your testing plan. You should be able to summarize the plan in 1-2 pages.

Testing Your Prototype

Testing works well when designers pair up. Work in groups of two when testing your prototype. One person should record observations and feedback.

Show the prototype to a tester and gather verbal, behavioral, and perceptual feedback on the prototype. Take notes using a Feedback Grid.

Repeat the process with different people individually or in small groups. This repetition will help answer high-level questions like “Do people actually want this?”, before you invest too much effort in the details like “Should this button be orange or green?”

Over time, your prototype will become more refined (e.g. from a sketch, to a fairly accurate model of the idea), and your testing can become more focused (e.g. from talking to a person about the idea, to having users of the idea interact with the model).

Tips for Success:

• Plan to use 7 minutes to interact with the prototype and 7 minutes to provide feedback is often enough to gain valuable feedback to help evolve the prototype.

• Document the tester’s feedback using a Feedback Grid. Keep these in a safe place until you return to share them with the group.

• Capture what you heard and learned by taking notes and taking a photo if you have permission to do so.

Using the Feedback

Bring the project team together to review and discuss feedback. Review the feedback grid notes to highlight 2–3 action points related to the strengths, improvements, ideas, and questions you heard about from young children and their families.

Read these questions out loud to the project team and encourage people to share their answers:

• What were some of the things you heard from people during testing?

• What did you hear that was surprising to you?

• Did anyone have any insights while testing with people? What did you learn?

• What will you do differently the next time you seek feedback on an idea?

Keep a record of what the group decides to do with the feedback that was collected.

Adapt the prototype as needed using the action points, and record what changes you want to make in the future.

Examples of Iteration in Practice