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Key takeaways
- No single tool covers everything: scale from unmoderated tests, location from heatmaps, magnitude from analytics, and the all-important why from moderated conversation.
- Test Figma prototypes before production code exists. Moving pixels is free; moving databases is not.
Tools don't do research. People do, with tools. But pick the wrong stack and you'll either drown in data or miss the thing that mattered. Below is the kit we actually reach for at UX Refinery, what each piece earns its place for, and how they fit together.
Useberry: streamlined unmoderated testing
Useberry is our workhorse for unmoderated testing: real users, no researcher in the room, results by morning. It runs more test types than most teams ever use, including:
- Think-out-loud tests: users narrate their decisions as they go. Messy, honest, invaluable.
- Quantitative task tests: success rates, time on task, completion figures you can trend over time.
- First-click tests: where do people instinctively click? Wrong answers here explain so much.
- Card sorts and tree tests: does your navigation match how users actually categorise things? Often not.
- Five-second tests: show a page briefly, then ask what it was about. Brutal. Effective.
- Preference tests: which option wins, and crucially, why.
Contentsquare: visualise behaviour and survey on-site
A note for anyone arriving with an old bookmark: Hotjar no longer exists as a standalone product. It merged into Contentsquare in 2025, and new accounts start there. The familiar toolkit survives inside it:
- Heatmaps: where people click, how far they scroll, what they ignore entirely. Dead zones show up fast.
- Session recordings: watch real visits back at double speed. Rage clicks are unmistakable once you've seen one.
- On-site surveys: ask one short question at the exact moment of frustration. Timing beats length.
Google Analytics: measure and optimise
- Audience analysis: who actually visits, versus who you assumed visits. These are often different crowds.
- Behaviour flow: the paths people take and the exact step where they leave. Your funnel, with the leaks marked.
- Goal conversions: track the actions that matter and watch what moves them.
- Site speed: slow pages quietly kill both experience and rankings. Find them here first.
- Custom reports: ignore the hundred default metrics. Build the five that answer your questions.
Google Meet or Microsoft Teams: remote moderated research
Everything above tells you what happened. A live session tells you why. Google Meet or Microsoft Teams, whichever you already have, is plenty. Watch someone use your product, ask what they're thinking at the interesting moments, and take notes. This is the layer teams skip. It's also the layer they quote back to us months later.
Figma: prototypes worth testing
Figma prototypes feel close enough to real that users react honestly, and changing them costs nothing. Test the risky ideas here, in front of strangers, before engineering exists. Embarrassment is free at this stage. Later it gets invoiced.
Need expert hands?
Tools collect. Researchers interpret. We run this whole stack for clients and turn the output into a short list of what to fix first. See our services or get in touch.
Layer up, keep testing
No tool does the thinking for you, but the right combination means you're never guessing. Layer them up, keep testing as you build, and bring in researchers when the data starts arguing with itself. That's what we're here for.