Designing sites is not usually a simple task. The designer usually knows the general audience the site is geared towards, but often doesn’t get much feedback on the site’s appearance until a lot of work has already been put into the project. Sometimes, something obvious to a visitor won’t be to the designer.
Tools like Usabilla.com aren’t a new idea, but they are definitely evolving into something very useful for the design team. Where sites like IntuitionHQ are aimed towards client collaboration, Usabilla is aimed more towards surveying and commenting from other designers, friends, clients, or prospective site users.
The setup works fairly simply. You create a design or sets of designs, create a test on Usabilla for them, and then write a series of questions for users to answer. Then you open the test up for invites and have users go check it out and leave their feedback, answering those questions. The feedback is analyzed and shown in graphical statistics which can be exported in PDF or PNG formats.
You can see which area of the design is most likely to generate clicks, what portions of the design are most memorable to users after seeing them, and so forth. A lot of valuable feedback can be quickly received this way.
Usabilla is free to use and just came out of beta. It’s headquartered in Amsterdam with a team of developers lead by founder Paul Veugen.
