Companies spend more on user experience research

Boston — Businesses are spending more money on and paying more attention to user experience research. According to a new survey of 1,300 marketing, product and user experience professionals from user experience technology provider Usertesting.com, 55% say usability testing budget increased in 2013.

The most popular reason (42%) was a change in attitude towards usability testing. Sixty percent of respondents said testing frequency increased in 2013, with 37% of those also saying the reason is a change in attitude toward testing. For 2014, 70% say frequency will increase.

Other notable results include:

• 41% of respondents have a dedicated team for usability testing, and 45% say two to five people work on user experience in their company.


• 84% of respondents run usability testing on websites, while 44% run usability testing on mobile apps and 43% run usability testing on mobile sites.


• 56% of respondents said the most important online trends affecting usability testing in the next five years will include multi-device interaction, and 50% selected touch interfaces.