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In today’s world of shortening attention spans and omnipresent hustle, wasting even a second could mean losing the chance to earn more time from a person you want to impress. If your interests lie in creating good user experiences, there is a fair chance you have heard of five-second testing.
Five-second testing is an established technique of usability research used by UX researchers, designers, product managers, and in a variety of other professions, such as marketing or business analysis.
In short, you show a picture of whatever you are designing (site, app, pair of socks) to a member of your intended audience for exactly five seconds. Then, you hide the picture and ask the participant a couple of questions. The goal is to learn whether the reaction — the participants’s first impression — is what you wanted to see. Did you get the main message across? Do people remember the company’s name? Sounds like an efficient way to test your product without needing to turn to full-on usability testing, right?