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.

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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)

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)

Maze Future of User Research 2026

21 days

average traditional research cycle from draft study to synthesis. Prototype-stage validation usually has to wait for the next quarter, not the current sprint

How It Works

From Figma link to findings before the handoff spec

Skip recruiting and scheduling. The persona runs without waiting on a researcher who is 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.

	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

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

FAQ

Questions designers ask about validating prototypes with AI personas

Both. Sessions run in a real browser, so any shared Figma prototype link works alongside any staging or production URL. No SDK, no plugin, no code changes. Prototype-stage validation is exactly the moment most designers reach for this.

As soon as the prototype is clickable end-to-end. Rougher fidelities still produce useful findings because the persona reads layout, labels, and flow logic. For lo-fi flows the value is concentrated in label clarity and flow logic rather than visual hierarchy.

A heuristic review or generic LLM critique is a surface pass. Tessary runs a configured persona across the whole session in a real browser, with consistent role context and a task they are trying to complete. The findings reflect where the persona actually hesitated, not where a checklist says they might.

Yes. Findings include the screen, the step, the interaction, severity, and what the persona was trying to do at that point. They are written to drop into a handoff spec or design-review doc directly, not as a summary you have to rewrite.

Keep exploring

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 freeNo credit card required. No recruiting. First session in minutes.