Welcome to Day 4. This week, my group focused on our user testing for our app. And it got me thinking. A major part of user testing is having the person or user go through your prototype to see if everything is manageable. This means speaking your mind about what you like, if you think navigation is easy and so on. With that in mind, it made me think about something: should a user tester be more opinionated or factual in user testing? And personally, I think opinion goes above fact this time. Let me explain.

Fact vs Opinion Debate

The debate is simple. You are given two approaches to an argument. You can go through facts or opinions. And truth be told, both have good advantages and disadvantages to their names. Forbes provides great definitions for both.

• Facts are things that are objectively true right now. They are not matters of opinion, open to debate, or things we believe will be true in the future.
• Opinions are our subjective beliefs about what is true or what will become true in the future.

Lets with facts. As a factual person, you are likely to be more logical than opinionated. You value truth about all else. Some of the pros for facts are that:

• Facts are supported by evidence, and enough where you can to the conclusion that the reason is correct.
• Facts can be repeated.
• Facts can provide reasons to why a person might feel the way they do.

On the other hand, the major disadvantages to facts are that they tend to lack or ignore any emotion within their content and they can be misinterpreted if done incorrectly. Opinions though are different. Some of their pros are:

• Personal feelings show genuine care for your subject.
• Explains the why of your reason 
• Provide reasons that may improve the basic facts

But there are also a lot of disadvantages too. Subjective behavior can really vary and be hard to place a definite number on where the person falls in their opinion. Similar to fact, opinion also be very misleading but this time because of its subjective nature.

Why are Both Needed in User Testing?

Opinion and fact both play critical roles to the success of the user testing phase. In the Sprint Handbook, opinion and fact tend to coincide with each other. For you see, opinions of the user tester will be what eventually becomes the facts. You don’t have them automatically. Like here’s an interesting quote:

“For example, ask participants to explain why they made specific choices or how they felt about certain elements of the prototype.”

That statement comes from the actual user testing part. If you were to go through all of the steps, including this one, it basically summarizes the opinions and feelings of the user. So statements like “I felt about ____” or “I thought ____ was easy to navigate”. With these opinions, comes the last part of the phase, which turns those opinions into facts about your app. And to me, I think this is why opinion matters more. Because you don’t start with the facts, it’s you who has to gain them. And you certainly can’t do that without opinions.