My experience with the K-Rauta internship program

This week I participated in the K-Rauta internship program for ECOM developers. This program has developers work 1-3 days inside a K-Rauta store so they can get hands-on experience on how things work inside the stores and get the chance to see what can be done to improve our ECOM platform.

I found the experience to be quite enlightening. Beyond seeing how the process works for employees of these stores, their experience with using our ECOM and how their customers use it was an eye-opener.

User testing is ALWAYS more important then you think

I certainly don't mean this as an insult, but it is safe to say that a developer has more technical experience than the average user. It can be hard to get past your assumptions on how things should or would be used. Getting to see how an average user interacts with your platform is incredibly useful. Of course, all developers have heard some version of this joke:

But, even keeping that in mind, you and QA are certain to miss something. You may think that the "select store" button on your website is obvious, other team members that have tested it may think it is obvious, until a customer walks into the store claiming that a product should be available at that location when it is, in fact, not there at all. They had simply not noticed that button and assumed it was there because it was marked as "available" (Available to order from the warehouse, but not at the location)

Listen to the people on the ground

User testing stories from the average customer is important. Just as important is testing with the employees of the actual stores that your ECOM is serving.

Getting the chance to see just how it is being used was quite valuable. I consider the whole program worth it just to get that opportunity.

I immediately got to see several avenues of improvement, along with several ideas for quality of life improvements direct from the people that deal with customers day after day. But you won't find those out unless you ask questions and listen.

After all, they not only have to use it everyday, but also deal with customers that use it for orders as well. They get to see everything!

Conclusion

After my stint in the program, getting to witness customer interactions with the staff and listening to their stories, I left with several pages of notes and suggestions that could benefit the user experience of the K-Rauta platform.

I consider the program a success and am glad that I participated. I feel I learned things that I can utilize when I do testing myself or conduct it with others.

tl;dr

• Testing is important
• Test with real users
• Do more testing
• If in doubt, do even more