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Task questions

Applies to Express usability tests

Task questions ask participants to complete an action using a live website, prototype, or app. Maybe you want to see how easily users can find a specific page or how intuitive your newly designed search functionality is. With task questions, you can find out directly from your participants.

When building a task question, you can add as much (or as little!) guidance as you want depending on what you’re trying to learn. You can also add URLs that will take participants directly to the website or prototype where you want them to complete the task.

Task question usage varies depending on your mission’s device type:

Desktop missions Mobile missions
  • Up to 15 task questions with no duration limit.
  • Capture face, screen, and audio during task questions.
  • Up to 15 task questions with a total recording time of 40 minutes. After 40 minutes, recording ends—even if the participant hasn’t finished the mission.
  • Capture screen and audio only.
Tip: Keep the duration of your test in mind when adding task questions. Participants can feel fatigued in just 15 minutes during unmoderated testing. Staying focused on your research goals will help your participants but it will also help you when it comes time to analyze.

Contents

  • Task question settings.
  • Add a task question to a usability test.
  • Manage task URLs.
  • Analyze a task question.

Task question settings

When adding a task question to your mission, you’ll customize your question in the center of the builder:

Here’s a breakdown of each option:

Setting Description
Task

The prompt or instructions participants see as part of this task. Here, enter guidance they should follow or any context they should know before beginning the task. For example, if they should complete the task using your company’s app, you should tell them that here.

You can format your text in the following ways:

However, only include links here that are supplementary. To link participants to a specific page or prototype related to the task, enter that under Task URL.

Tip: For inspiration writing task questions, see Become a Task Writing Pro from Dscout’s People Nerds.
Task URL (optional)

A link to the website or prototype where participants should complete this task. This URL will open automatically when participants reach this task and will automatically close when they finish the task. (To stop displaying the URL after the task question, see Close task URL in the table below.)

For more information on including a prototype, see Add a Figma prototype to a usability mission.

Tip: Try managing your task URLs from at the mission level rather than on a question-by-question basis. For more information, see Task URLs.
Set success URL (website only)

The URL participants should land on when successfully completing the task. Dscout will report success for this task during analysis based on whether participants visit the URL entered here.

Tip: Use an asterisk (*) to create a wildcard URL if the place where participants land upon completion can vary. For example, https://www.sneakers.com/running/* will consider any URL beginning with https://www.sneakers.com/running/ a success regardless of what else is in the URL.
Task flow (prototype only)

Defines where participants should start and end the task in your Figma prototype. This is useful if you are using the same prototype for multiple tasks because it lets you override the default start screen set by Figma.

Hover over the following and click Edit to make your selections:

Starting screen: Where participants will be directed when the task begins.

Success screen (optional): Where you expect participants to end upon successful completion. Dscout will report success for this task during analysis based on whether participants land on the screen chosen here.

Task questions also offer options related to follow-ups, task URLs, and privacy. You’ll access these in the right sidebar:

Here’s a breakdown of each option: