This is the second part of a three-part series about our app Quantify that we created to help us make our first feature documentary. This behind-the-scenes is possible by a partnership with the great people at UserTesting.

*To catch up and to get more insight into the app, check out our last post.

Progress

Just a few weeks ago, our developer Ryan Newsome got us to the point of releasing our first public beta. This was a big step and was super exciting, as we decided to fundamentally re-work Quantify back in October, and it was great to finally be able to interact with our new UI paradigms.

We rolled out the beta to about 25 people—or at least we thought we did. As most of you know, beta testing apps for iOS is not for the faint of heart. We had a miss-fired launch that left some testers with an excited email about the beta, but no build on their device. We realized it after a few quiet days, but it's hard to believe that we're 8 years into the launch of the App store and the process is still this brutal.

So far, about 10 of our testers have installed and launched the app. We feel like we're up and running now. One key thing that we've noticed with our beta testers is that although they really like the app, getting feedback from them only happens when we hit them up individually and we're still trying to get a film out the door that we can be proud of.

Text from Wes

So that was our dilemma. Our beta testers have really great insights but it's going to take some amount of time to get those insights from them. We're short on time and really wanting to move the app forward because there is a good chance it might be our best bet at keeping food on the table as we continue to edit the film.

UserTesting Saves the Day

With no time and in need of feedback to move Quantify forward we put up a 3 person test on UserTesting last night. Our test was limited to people who shoot or edit video as part of their profession, so it was a very niche tester we needed...and within an hour we had our first completed test. Within the second hour we had our 2nd and 3rd test!

This morning we reviewed the tests and were able to get some modified design images to Ryan so he can start implementing them while we get back to work.

Design updates

Some of the changes coming to the app because of testing

After reading our last post, Marc Edwards from Bjango (and the designer of Quantify) mentioned that we should consider Quantify'ing the next set of user videos. We loved the idea, but when we went to do this we came across some rad features already built into UserTesting.

One other feature we came across was the ability to save favorite testers. This guy DarkBulb did such a great job for us that we definitely want him involved in future builds. Check out his highlight reel below. Also, we had a video professional who wasn't quite convinced. We want to revisit with him when we're closer to launch to see if he can catch the vision of Quantify saving him hours a week.

Our big take away from this round of testing was the need for context within the app. In the App Store, and in our marketing, we can supply a lot of context for what Quantify does, but we've discovered that it's key to make that context abundantly clear in the app as well. People don't tolerate needing to put a lot of discovery into a new app, so helping them quickly catch the vision of Quantify saving them lots of hours is essential to creating regular users.

Quick Tip

Tip for making tests: keep tasks super simple and concise. We've understandably confused some testers with long questions.