Usability Testing for Product Designers
Validate your Figma prototype before dev handoff
You spent two weeks refining the flow. It passed stakeholder review. Then a support ticket arrived three weeks post-launch: users cannot complete step three. The friction was in the prototype the whole time. Tessary finds it before the handoff spec is written.
The Problem
Designers know too much about the flows they build.
You know why the three-step confirmation flow exists. You know what the error state means. A user arriving at the prototype for the first time has none of that context. They hesitate, guess, and sometimes give up at exactly the step you assumed was obvious.
For B2B products, recruiting compounds this. The right personas (procurement managers, operations leads, finance approvers) do not participate in public panels. Recruiting from your own user base to review a Figma prototype takes two to four weeks from first outreach to usable synthesis. That is when it works. Often it does not.
26%
of user research is now produced by UX, UI, and product designers rather than dedicated researchers (Maze Future of User Research 2026)
66%
of teams saw increased research demand in 2026, while dedicated research headcount has not kept pace (Maze Future of User Research 2026)
100x
cheaper to fix a usability problem during the design phase than after launch, making prototype-stage validation the highest-leverage point
How It Works
From Figma link to findings before the handoff spec
No recruiting. No scheduling. No waiting on a researcher already stretched across four other projects.
Paste your Figma prototype link or staging URL
Works on any shared Figma prototype link and any browser-accessible URL. No SDK, no code changes, no browser plugin required.
Configure a persona for your target user
Define the role, experience level, and task. For example: "an operations manager at a 150-person SaaS company, first time in the billing settings, trying to update a payment method." The persona navigates with exactly that context, not yours.
Review findings before you write the handoff spec
Screenshots, hesitation points, interaction steps, and prioritized usability issues by severity. Reference them in your handoff notes or share directly with your PM before development begins.
What You Will Find
Friction that internal reviews miss
These are not bugs in the code. They are interaction decisions that felt right during design but do not transfer to a user with no product context.
Label ambiguity
Navigation labels and button text that are clear to the team but not to users encountering them for the first time. Internal shorthand that only makes sense with product context.
Unclear confirmation states
The user does not know whether an action succeeded, is pending, or failed. Designers know the intended behavior. First-time users only see what is on screen.
Hesitation before key actions
Steps where the persona pauses before proceeding, indicating the next action is not obvious. The most valuable signal is where a user stops and looks before clicking.
Missing error recovery paths
What the user should do when something goes wrong is absent or ambiguous. Error states are easy to forget in the happy-path flow of a Figma prototype.
Side by Side
Tessary vs. UserTesting and Maze for design validation
Maze returns click maps and completion rates but not qualitative reasoning about why users hesitated. UserTesting delivers video sessions, but recruiting the right B2B decision-maker for a prototype review takes weeks or fails entirely.
| Capability | Tessary | UserTesting | Maze |
|---|---|---|---|
| Figma prototype support | ✓ Yes | Limited | ✓ Yes |
| Recruiting required | ✓ No | ✗ Yes (weeks for B2B) | Partial |
| Domain-aware personas | ✓ Yes | Depends on panel | ✗ No |
| Time to results | Minutes | Days to weeks | Hours |
| Starting cost | Free | $30,000+/year | Paid plans |
| No credit card to start | ✓ Yes | ✗ No | ✗ No |
Tessary replaces the recruiting and scheduling step entirely, rather than adding another tool on top of the ones you already use.
The Shift
Research demand is outpacing research teams
According to the Maze Future of User Research 2026 report, 66% of teams saw increased research demand in 2026, while dedicated research headcount has not grown at the same rate. Validation work is landing on the people closest to the product: designers and product managers.
26%
of research is now produced by designers rather than dedicated UX researchers
66%
of teams saw increased research demand in 2026 with no corresponding growth in research headcount
If your team already runs Figma prototype testing without recruiting, or your engineers use Tessary for UX validation before opening a PR, the designer workflow runs on the same platform with no additional setup.
Get Started
Test your prototype before the handoff spec is written.
Tessary's free tier gives designers three sessions per month, no credit card required. Paste the Figma link, define the persona, get findings before you write the spec.
Try Tessary free →No credit card required. No recruiting. First session in minutes.