Usability testing services
Usability testing puts your product in front of people and watches them try to do real things with it: sign up, find a setting, pay, recover from a mistake. It shows where they hesitate, misread a label or give up, and why. We test websites, web apps, mobile apps and the setup flows of connected devices, and we turn what we see into changes your designers and developers can act on.
We are an independent testing company. We have tested other people's software since 2018, we did not design yours, and we have no reason to defend it. 50+ engineers, in Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
Two weeks, free if you are not happy with what we deliver. We invoice from week three.
Who this is for
- People drop out of your sign-up or checkout. Your analytics show where they leave. They do not show why, and the why is what you can fix.
- You are about to ship a redesign or a new onboarding flow. It costs far less to find the confusing step before release than after a month of support tickets.
- Support keeps answering the same "how do I" question. That question is usually a design problem with a known address.
- Your app reviews say it is confusing. You need to know which part, for whom, and what to change first.
- You have no researcher in house. You need one for a few weeks, not a hire.
What we test, and how
We start with the journeys that decide whether the product works for the business: sign-up, log-in, search, checkout, the first task a new user has to complete. Testing every screen to the same depth costs a lot and repeats itself. Testing the journeys properly tells you whether a person can do what they came to do.
Expert review. Our testers walk each journey against established usability heuristics: is it clear where you are, what will happen when you tap, and how to undo it? Do error messages say what went wrong and what to do next? This is the cheapest round and it finds the obvious problems before anyone else has to.
Task-based walkthroughs on real devices. The same journeys done on phones, tablets and desktop browsers, on small screens and slow connections, recording every point of friction with a screenshot or a screen recording.
Moderated sessions with real users. We write the tasks and the script, run the sessions remotely and ask people to think aloud while they work. We record what they do, not what they say they would do. Participants come from your customer base, or we agree a recruitment route with you before the first session.
Prototypes and designs. A clickable prototype can be tested before a line of code is written, which is where a change costs least.
Usability and accessibility testing overlap but are not the same. If you need a WCAG 2.2 AA audit, that is its own engagement and its own page.
What you get at the end
- A findings report your team can work from. Each problem with where it happens, what the person was trying to do, the evidence, how badly it gets in the way of the task, and a recommended change.
- An order to fix things in. Problems that stop someone finishing a journey come first, irritations last.
- The recordings and notes. Yours to keep, so your designers can watch the moment it went wrong rather than read about it.
- Issues where your team works. Filed in your tracker, or in BugBoard, which comes with the engagement.
- A retest. Once the fixes are in, we run the same tasks again to check the change worked.
An example
For NewbridgeFX, a foreign exchange and payments provider, we reviewed the sign-up process, combining usability and security testing. The recommendations were small and specific, mostly around error handling and validation checks, which is where onboarding most often loses people who have already decided to sign up.
Read the NewbridgeFX case study, or our guide to usability testing if you want to run some of this yourself.
What it costs
$25 to $45 an hour.
The rate moves with the seniority of the engineer, how long you commit for, and the mix of manual, automation and specialist work. Longer commitments move down the range. Our tools come with the engagement, with no separate licence cost.
An engineer can be working on your product in about two weeks. We start the same way on every engagement. Two weeks, free if you are not happy with what we deliver. We invoice from week three.
When we are not the right answer
We would rather say this here than on the third call.
If you need numbers from hundreds of people. Usability sessions tell you why something fails. If the question is how many users prefer one version over another, a survey or an A/B test answers it better and costs less.
If you want a new visual design. We are testers. We find where people struggle and recommend what to change, and your designers decide how it should look.
Where the contract requires staff on site, or nationals only. We are in Romania and work remotely, so that is a straight no.
Why us
We are independent. We did not design or build your product, so we have no reason to call a confusing screen clear.
We built our own tools. BugBoard for test management, Flows for automation, Auditi for WCAG, GDPR and FDA auditing, BetterFlow for visibility into the hours, and our AI Security Toolkit. They come with the engagement.
Four ISO certificates, all current to 05.12.2027: ISO 9001:2015, ISO/IEC 27001:2022, ISO 13485:2016 and ISO 14001:2015. Session recordings are handled under the ISO 27001 management system.
4.9 on Clutch, from more than 65 reviews. Written by clients, not by us. Founded in 2018, 50+ engineers.
Common questions
Is usability testing the same as UX testing?
Mostly, yes. People use the two names for the same work: checking whether real people can complete real tasks without getting stuck. UX testing is sometimes used more broadly to include how the product feels, but the method is the same.
How many participants do we need?
Fewer than most teams expect. The usual guidance from usability research is around five people per type of user per round, because the same problems start repeating after that. Several small rounds with fixes in between find more than one large round.
Can you test a design before it is built?
Yes. A clickable prototype is enough for most journeys, and it is the cheapest point at which to change anything.
Do you check accessibility at the same time?
We flag accessibility problems we see during usability work. A full WCAG 2.2 AA audit with keyboard and screen reader testing is a separate engagement, described on our accessibility testing page.
How soon can you start?
About two weeks to have an engineer working on your product. The first two weeks are free if you are not happy with what we deliver, and we invoice from week three.
Talk to us
Tell us what the product is, who uses it and where you think people get stuck. We will tell you which journeys we would test first, and if a short expert review would answer your question without user sessions, we will tell you that instead.