With us, the viewing together of test videos usually takes place at irregular intervals. In one week, for example, we spend a whole morning just looking at test videos, but in the next week, we don’t really have the time to do it again. It’s obvious that making a habit out of this is not the ideal thing.

The solution to this problem was provided by a Userbrain customer: the User Observation Lunch. The idea behind this is extremely simple. Once a week, your entire team meets for lunch to watch one or more user test videos together. Ideally, you’ll first want to watch the videos in advance yourself and make a note of the biggest problems, so that you or your team colleagues don’t have to take notes during the meal. At least that’s what John, our Userbrain customer who brought us this idea, does, meeting with his team once a week for a “User Observation Lunch” to watch their weekly Userbrain test video together.

The nice thing about this idea is not just that your entire team comes together, which in itself is already positive, but a point that Jared Spool describes: the fact that you’ll see the best results when not only your designers and programmers watch the user tests, but also all other stakeholders, such as product managers, executives, support staff, and quality managers:

Get every member on the team to spend two hours every six weeks and you’ll likely have a great user experience appear before your very eyes.

When everybody really comes together to watch user tests of their product, decisions suddenly are no longer based on the opinions of individual team members, but actually depend on what your users really need, and this not only leads to a great user experience, but to a simple, clear and understandable product and thus, happier customers.