Usability testing when you have no research budget
Five participants and an afternoon will tell you more about your product than a quarter of internal debate.
ZooBieDoo Infotech Engineering TeamRead
Key takeaways
- Name the action, not the mechanism, on buttons.
- Errors need what, why and what to do next.
- Empty states should explain and offer a next step.
- Hesitation before a click is a microcopy signal.
Error messages need three things
- What went wrong, specifically.
- Why, if it is not obvious.
- What to do next.
“Something went wrong” satisfies none of these. Where a system error is genuinely unexplainable, give a reference the support team can use so the person is not stuck.
Empty states are an opportunity
An empty list is a common first experience. Rather than a blank area, explain what will appear here, why it is empty, and what to do to populate it.
Distinguish between never-had-any and filtered-to-nothing — they need different messages and different actions.
Write plainly and test it
Avoid internal jargon and hedged phrasing. Short sentences in the vocabulary your users use beat carefully worded corporate language.
Microcopy can be tested like anything else. Watching where people hesitate before clicking tells you which words are doing their job and which are not.
Keeping copy consistent across a product
Inconsistent terminology is a usability problem, not merely an aesthetic one. When the same thing is called an account in one place and a profile in another, people reasonably assume they are different.
Keep a short terminology list of the words your product uses for its core concepts, and the words it deliberately avoids. It takes an afternoon and prevents years of drift.
Include voice guidance: how errors are phrased, whether the product addresses the user directly, how formal it is. Without it, copy reflects whoever wrote each screen.
Frequently asked questions
Ideally someone with writing skill working alongside design. Where there is no dedicated writer, a designer with editorial guidance beats defaulting to developer placeholders.
Match the context. Financial and clinical products warrant precision and restraint; consumer products can be warmer. Consistency matters more than the register chosen.
Sparingly, and never in errors or on pages where someone is stuck or has lost data. Humour at the wrong moment reads as indifference.
