Elanex

With over 32,000 practitioners worldwide, Elanex is not your typical translation service provider. Combining a crowdsourced business model with a powerful technology platform, the company provides a growing customer base with a more efficient, cost-effective way to get professional translation services.

Founded in 2003, the California-based company experienced rapid growth, and added thousands of customers and translators to its translation platform. In 2010, Elanex began to focus on the platform’s overall usability. This led Chairman Jonathan Kirk to sign up for a usability test cycle with uTest and its own global community of software testers.

“We were very familiar with the crowdsourcing model, so we were delighted to identify a company in the test space with the same philosophy,” said Kirk. “uTest is doing in software testing what we’re doing in translation.”

This case study will demonstrate how uTest was able to provide Elanex with a streamlined process for conducting usability testing of their translation platform. It will include details on uTest’s dedicated UX experts, survey results, unique feedback and other aspects of uTest’s usability services.

Elanex: Testing Goals and Objectives

Jonathan explained that the Elanex platform is an integrated system with a variety of different users, including project managers, thousands of translators, editors, accounting, sales people, and others, with many different tasks to accomplish. As such, the usability of the platform varies greatly depending on the specific role of the individual using it.

“The platform has evolved tremendously this year, especially the user interface,” said Jonathan. “The problem was that we were not entirely sure we were providing the optimal experience, so we started thinking of ways to make the platform more user-friendly for everyone that used it.”

But how? Where to start? uTest has dedicated usability (UX) experts in its community that can be assigned to every customer account if need be. In this role, the UX expert manages every phase of the testing, including the usability audit, survey creation, focus group selection and detailed analysis of the results.

“Our UX expert was invaluable for this process,” Jonathan explained. “Especially considering the fact that we have never managed a test cycle like this before. She really took the time to learn the different roles within our platform. She gave us a lot of useful information. She’s a true professional.”

Test Cycle Execution

After an introductory session, in which Elanex explained the scope of the project, the test cycle was ready to begin. Over the next seventeen days, their dedicated UX expert examined the product from the perspective of multiple users, compiling notes, feedback and suggestions into a comprehensive report. The UX expert also conducted a user survey, soliciting and collating feedback from users provided by Elanex.