What I Learned From Watching Five People Use My Prototype

I was sure the onboarding flow was finished. Then five people tried it, and four of them got stuck on the same screen.

The setup

Five participants, thirty minutes each, a clickable prototype and one simple rule: I do not explain anything. If they ask what a button does, I ask what they think it does.

What went wrong

The word “Workspace” meant something different to every participant. Two of them thought it was a settings page. The fix was not a new screen, just a better label and an example.

The script I use now

• Start with a warm-up question about how they work today.
• Give tasks, not instructions: “Invite a colleague”, not “Click the invite button”.
• Ask what they expected after every surprise.
• End with: “What would you change first?”

Small tests like this cost an afternoon and save weeks of rework.