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The achilles heel of usability testing is the complexity of it all. You need to recruit high-quality participants, analyze users’ behavior while observing simultaneously, take detailed notes, coordinate scheduling, and so much more.
That’s why we love a good usability testing template. “Templatizing” your usability research helps streamline your research sessions to be faster and more accurate. It’s also a good way to help set guardrails and guidance for non-UXRs when decentralizing research across teams.
We’ve compiled a list of over 40 templates and examples of usability testing templates so you can establish more structure to your research workflow. Avoid the hubris of over-stretching yourself with the help of some good ole’ templates.
In this article, you’ll find:
Templates for usability test planning, writing scripts, note-taking, and reporting
In this list, you can find templates for each part of the process.
✍️ Usability testing plan templates
Making sure you have a game plan for your usability research project might be overwhelming, but you shouldn’t skimp on this phase of the process. Your usability testing plan should tell you:
What you’re trying to achieve
How you’re going to test your objective
Who your participants are
The type of tasks you need to write
And more
The more detailed your research plan is, the more prepared you’ll be to actually conduct the sessions.
Here are some usability testing plan templates to help you get started. 👇
Asana is a favorite for project management and planning. With this template, you can map out your planning phases to establish your hypothesis and participant requirements. You can even create a sign up form for participants to determine their eligibility. Once your usability testing session is complete, you can follow up on action items and track your insights in one place.
This checklist by NNG helps you plan usability tests from defining goals to writing exploratory or specific usability tasks. If you’re just getting started with usability testing and don’t know where to start, this checklist is a good framework to help guide you through the process.
This usability test plan template by Dr. David Travis at Userfocus is a simple, workbook-style document that outlines all the different components you need for the research session. Albeit the document is simple, it’s a straightforward outline that lists all the essential parts of usability testing:
Not a fan of Asana? Create a usability test scenario with this usability testing whiteboard in Clickup, another popular project management tool. You can create screenshots for each task the users take and create a visual guide to what happened during the testing session. Keep track of each user and their feedback with sticky notes and mark each action item as you need in this customizable whiteboard.
Don’t know what to say to participants to get the session started? The good news is that there are script templates to help with that. These writing script templates are helpful for clearly communicating the usability session objectives and what the participants can expect.
This Google document by Github lists all of the information you need to go over before, during and after the usability testing session. There’s a script for:
Don’t know how to write a usability test for a SaaS platform? Trymata created this scenario for when you’re looking for a new tool at your job. This script template lists out the tasks you need to complete in order to evaluate the tool you’re looking at. You can even use this to test out different tools when shopping for usability testing tools.
This graphic from UserZoom goes over the framework of reviewing your final script. Use this template as a checklist to do a quick QA test on your final usability testing script. The infographic is pretty self-explanatory so you can quickly refer back to it when reviewing your script.
We all love a good Notion template. It’s easily customizable and includes different building blocks to create whatever you want, including planning a research session. This usability testing script by Slava Shestopalov, a design leader at the Projector Institute in Ukraine, structures what a moderator should say and do throughout a remote testing session.
Usability testing templates for different types of tests
Need a template for landing page validation? Or looking to test the usability of a new website prototype? Here are some examples of usability test templates for different types of tests.
Sprig is a browser-based usability testing tool that asks users to record their screens and video responses as they interact with prototypes. If you already have this tool in your UX research toolstack, you can easily add this in-the-moment usability test template to your Sprig library. Simply drop in your prototype link and easily customize your test with built-in NDAs and recorded task questions.
✨ Need some high-quality participants for your usability test? Sprig integrates with User Interviews so you can automate both participant recruitment and usability testing.
Looking to usability test a website or a landing page? This pack of templates by Sharewell includes study templates for company website testing, E-shop UX validation, and landing page validation. While the templates fill in the blanks for you, you can still change the study parameters to your research needs.
This template covers all the stages of the usability testing process, from running and planning testing sessions to analyzing data and sharing insights. You can create tasks, manage participants, and keep track of test results all in one place. You’ll need a Fibery account to use the template, but it’s free to use.
Taking notes and observing participants at the same time can be difficult. And simply jotting down notes with no structure won’t cut it for usability testing. Relying on note-taking templates to help you organize the way you take notes during test sessions can help you stay on track and establish structure to your “a-ha” moments.
Here are a couple of examples of note-taking templates for usability testing.👇
If you’re looking for a more modular and creative way to take notes besides using good ole’ Google Docs, try this note-taking board in Miro by Syncier. You can build a note-taking board with sticky notes to keep track of responses or notes during the usability test session, and then organize the post-its in an affinity mapping board.
We all love a good spreadsheet, especially one that’s already formatted for you. Our note-taking template comes in a package of templates for a qualitative usability testing launch kit to help you at every stage of usability testing. The best part is, this template automatically updates when you check and uncheck questions in the Questions spreadsheet so you don’t have to manually do it. Add in as many questions as you need and explore the other tabs in this kit to keep track of your project in one place.
Once you’ve gathered all your data and analyzed your insights, it’s time to put the icing on the cake: putting together the usability test report. Effectively communicating your research findings in a clear and concise way is a skill that all effective UX research teams need to learn.
Take a look at the different ways to deliver your findings in the most effective way with these test report templates.👇
If you’re looking for a template for showcasing your entire usability testing project in a detailed, yet concise manner, look at this one for inspiration. You’ll see how to summarize:
Getting stakeholder buy-in is a dilemma that all UX research teams go through. This sample deck designed by Maze is a great example of how to share key findings, provide recommendations, and outline the next steps in a creative way—without having to create a slide deck from scratch.
Here are some more usability testing articles, guides, and best practices to help you streamline your usability testing workflow as you shop around for the best tools.👇
Recruit participants for usability testing with User Interviews
You might have all the best templates and usability testing tools at your disposal, but without high-quality participants, you’re missing out on high-quality insights.
Automate participant recruitment for your next usability testing session with our pool of 2.8 million+ through User Interviews’s Recruit. When you start with strong participants, you can spend more time and effort on the other parts of usability testing, like actually conducting the sessions and interacting with the right people.
It’s free to sign up and we also integrate with several other research tools to streamline your entire research workflow. Learn more about how to automate your research with User Interviews here.
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Content writer. Marketing enthusiast. INFJ. Inspired by humans and their stories. She spends ridiculous amounts of time on Duolingo and cooking new recipes.
