Beta

Beta is the third phase of the service life cycle. At the end of alpha, the team decides which design idea they have tried and tested is the best and brings it forward into beta to start building the service for real. Beta also involves thinking about how the service will integrate with (or start to replace) existing services, and preparing for the transition to the fourth phase, live.

Beta actually contains two distinct stages – private beta and public beta.

Private beta means testing the service with a limited number of people to test usability, gather feedback and improve it. In private beta, people of different demographics are specifically invited to test the service so that the team can identify and resolve specific issues or barriers before the service can move forward into public beta.

Public beta begins when the service has been improved and the team is confident it can be run at scale, meaning that anyone who needs to use this service can access it and use it.

Private beta testers interact with the service specifically to test different aspects of it, but in public beta the service is opened to average, everyday users who will interact with the service to complete a task that meets a real need they have in their daily lives.

If a service is replacing an older or legacy service, the legacy service is kept running as a back-up during public beta. Some public beta phases can take a long time as the team needs to be absolutely sure that all issues have been identified and resolved before going live and retiring the legacy service.

What do user researchers do during beta?

During beta, the focus for the team is on making sure that the solution they have chosen works as well as possible for users. This is assessed through a combination of conducting user research and gathering data on performance metrics to create a comprehensive picture of how the service is working.

In beta, user researchers are primarily focused on:

• testing the developing service with likely users to make sure it meets their needs
• understanding and helping the team resolve usability issues
• helping to facilitate accessibility testing, such as testing with users who use assistive technologies

The team also needs to continue to think about the service from end to end and consider all the ways users will interact with it. This process begins at alpha, but during beta it is vital to show that the service works within the broader user journey and that the team has identified and made progress towards improving the user experience across different channels to ensure that they have a smooth, joined up experience of this service.

User researchers assist with this by running tests of the end-to-end service, including offline aspects and support options. You can also help review web analytics and back-office data to measure the service performance and analyse support tickets or requests to identify specific problems that users raise. Surveys and follow-up interviews are also very useful to collect detailed feedback from service users about their experience using the service.

During beta, your user research will help you and the team understand:

• more about how different kinds of users experience the service and the barriers or pain points they encounter
• the usability and accessibility issues that need to be fixed
• specific ways the service can be improved

You can conclude your research in beta when you have gathered enough data to prove that your service works well for users and meets their needs, including those with support and access needs.

After the team is happy with the service, it can go live.