Different stages of user testing

Being a UE specialist, usability testing is as common as lunch. The ultimate goal of usability testing is to improve the design of products (electronic appliance, software, website, etc).

Any products has their own producing life cycle. The testing can be conducted at any stage of the product development.

1. Planning stage - at the sketching phase, there are lots of uncertainty regarding the design of the product. Nothing can be utilised for a profound user test. Paper prototyping, mockup and wireframe are often used as low-fidelity prototype in testing. The blueprint is normally based on the result.
2. During the production - whenever designers come up with high-fidelity mockups, at least when interactive functions have been implemented, a more well-rounded user testing can be set up. At this stage the products being tested should already be able to mimic the finished products.
3. On staging - at this stage we can do so called alpha beta test. The product should be stable enough with fully equipped functions, which is ready to be accessed by participants of usability tests.
4. On production - after release, malfunctions may happen. User testing plays a key role in improving the product. Actually, the majority of usability testings only happen at this stage, due to resource or budget concerns. If you have done testing at previous stages, you'll have an easy job here.