Accelerating iterative feedback: How Lyssna transformed LabXchange's approach to testing.
We speak with Tess Gadd, Product Design Lead at LabXchange.
Summary
Find out how LabXchange’s move from Maze to Lyssna transformed their approach to UX research, streamlined decision-making, and fueled continuous innovation.
LabXchange, an innovative edtech platform, provides free access to over 24,000 high-quality STEM learning resources from 165+ leading science education organizations.
Created at Harvard University with support from the Amgen Foundation, LabXchange gives educators the ability to find, customize, and use the content that best fits their teaching needs, including virtual lab simulations, annotated videos, interactive animations, STEM career narratives, and more.
LabXchange has evolved significantly since its inception. Tess Gadd, the product design lead at LabXchange, has been involved with the platform from its conceptual stages. “I’ve watched it grow from sketches on a whiteboard to a community of over 47 million individual users.”
As their growth and expansion continues, the need for a robust, cost-effective user testing platform that could target their specific demographic was crucial.
Challenge
“I used a competitor for years but I found that it didn't meet our needs any longer as the organization grew,” shares Tess.
With this solution falling short, coinciding with a price increase, Tess was on the lookout for a new user testing tool that would match her top criteria – a survey tool capable of integrating Figma prototypes, with the ability to target specific demographics, particularly high school STEM teachers. And all wrapped in a cost-effective bundle.
“As a grant-funded organization, it's important for us to find cost-effective ways to test with our target demographic.”
Tess Gadd
Product Design Lead
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Solution
While exploring alternatives to Maze, Tess found Lyssna. Excited to enhance their user testing methods, Tess and her team were quick to start using Lyssna's features.
Their testing toolkit now includes surveys, Figma prototype tests, first click tests, preference tests, and tree tests. Tess particularly loves the Figma integration, highlighting its ability to provide detailed metrics like track duration, misclicks, heatmaps, and completion rates.
One of the features that stood out for Tess and her team was Lyssna's ability to target specific demographics.
“We very specifically seek to connect with high school STEM teachers,” Tess shares, noting that they’re able to connect with this target group and receive same-day feedback with Lyssna.
Additionally, Tess has found that Lyssna’s "pay per test length" model has encouraged the team to conduct shorter, more frequent surveys, leading to more iterative feedback cycles. “In the past we built out longer surveys and sent them out less often. This has made us switch to iterative feedback as opposed to bulky ones.”
“For example, we wanted a place on our main navigation bar for students to get to their work, so we used the word Learn,” shares Tess.
“Two hours later, after getting all the feedback, we realized that participants thought that ‘Learn’ was to learn more about the organization, not to access their learning materials!”
"That simple test saved us a lot of heartache!"
Tess Gadd
Product Design Lead
This approach of quicker, shorter surveys, has made their feedback processes more efficient and led to quicker decision-making and more responsive product improvements, driving continuous innovation for Tess and her team.
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Results
Since the switch to Lyssna, Tess has seen a significant improvement in her team's UX research skills.
Tess shares a specific example involving an issue discovered in their simulations. "We noticed a problem, so the designers, managers, learning designers, and engineers brainstormed and came up with nine possible solutions.”
“We then prototyped each option and synced them to a different survey.”
Within just a day, they were able to analyze the results, focusing on metrics like misclicks and completion ratios.
“With this data, we were able to convince stakeholders to continue in the strongest direction.”
In just 24 hours, the team had brainstormed collaboratively and used data-driven insights to achieve their goal. This perfectly illustrates Tess's view that "Lyssna is a quick and straightforward way to gather user feedback."
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