Test in Multiple Geographic Locations?

You may feel some pressure from your marketing or market research partners within your company to conduct usability testing in multiple locations. There is a romantic quality to traveling to different markets to conduct tests, and anyone who has traveled knows that people are different in different regions of the world. But do the people in different places find different usability problems from the people who are close by your offices?

The answer is: Occasionally. Some research shows that testing in multiple locations will reveal many of the same problems. As much as 80 percent of usability problems may be the same across locations. But the other 20 percent may be location or context specific and that can make being on location well worthwhile.

So, just as you take into account other factors that make people different from one another, such as age or education level, you probably should look at location as well. Needs of users may be different from city to city (San Franciscans generally don't need snow tires for their cars; drivers in Boston are much more likely to use them). Terminology may be different from region to region ("purse" or "pocketbook"? "pop"'or "soda"?). Motivations and experiences will be different, too, possibly from floor to floor inside a corporation (the mail room versus "mahogany row"). These things and others make up what we'll call the user's "context.'

When considering whether to test in multiple locations or in a location outside your immediate area, start by thinking about the user's context (as well as budget and time availability). If the context of one type of users is significantly different from the context of another type of users in a way that will impact your product, you should try to go into those different contexts to test. The context might be geographical (for example, weather-driven buying decisions in the south versus the north) or hierarchical (for example, administrative assistants versus directors of a company) or both (or something else).