Meeting users where they are: testing VINCE in Turku
One of the key cornerstones for our project work is user-driven service design. It is an essential tool for digital service development as it ensures that solutions are built around real user needs, leading to more effective, usable, and successful products.
Over the past last 2,5 months Sateenkaari Koto ry has been testing intensively VINCE application with real end-users. Since the app is still in development, every conversation, comment, and click has helped us understand how it performs in real life – across different languages, experiences, and digital habits.
Collecting real insights from diverse multilingual users
During this time the application has been tested with over 70 individual users in nearly 40 different languages. These included a wonderfully diverse range, such as: Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Bengali, Bulgarian, Croatian, Dutch, French, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Marathi, Oromia, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Russian, Serbian, Sinhala, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Tamil, Thai, Tigrinia, Turkish, Twi, Ukrainian, Urdu, Vietnamese, and others. This linguistic variety gave us valuable insight into how multilingual users interact with our interface and content, and how design decisions can better reflect global accessibility.
Listening to users explain what they expected to happen on each screen was often more insightful than any technical test could ever be.
Testing in familiar spaces revealed more realistic user habits
To reach our testers we’ve been travelling around Turku to meet users where it was most convenient for them. We met at several of Turku’s universitiy campuses, in neighbourhoods like Halinen, Varissuo, and Hirvensalo, as well as in Monitori at Turku’s main square, in local libraries and at Sateenkaari Koto’s Contact Point Mustikka. Meeting people in their own environments – places where they study, work or live – provided a much more natural and honest understanding of how they actually use the app.
Linguistic variety gave us valuable insight into how multilingual users interact with our interface and content, and how design decisions can better reflect global accessibility.
Understanding how different users navigate the app
Each testing session was unique. Some participants were very comfortable with technology, while others were newer to smartphones or digital tools. These differences were essential in shaping our understanding of usability: what feels „intuitive” and „natural” to one person might be confusing to another. Listening to users explain what they expected to happen on each screen was often more insightful than any technical test could ever be.
Work continues
As development continues, the feedback collected from this phase will surely help refine the app’s design and language support, ensuring it’s inclusive, accessible, and enjoyable for everyone – regardless of where they come from or what language they speak.
Writer: Pat Kulka-Kowalczyk
