AI usability testing: simulated people use your live site

The team that built a flow cannot see it fresh. Usability sessions with real people show where newcomers struggle, but they take days to recruit and schedule, so most flows ship before anyone outside the team has tried them. Analytics shows the drop-off only after real visitors hit it. A flow in Mimiq sends simulated newcomers through first, so the obvious dead ends are fixed before anyone real meets them.

• Real browsers and a real task: they click, scroll, type, fill in forms, go back, wait, and check their email.
• Each person has a profile, such as an age, a job, a country and a comfort with technology, and decides every step from what is on their screen.
• See who finished, got partway, or gave up, step by step, and why, in their own words.
• Fix it, then send the same people through again with the same task.

At every step, each person looks at their screen and decides what to do next: click, scroll, type, fill in a form, go back, wait, check their email, or give up. Nobody scripts the path. They get lost where a newcomer might, and they say what they were thinking at each step.

When a form asks for details, they use their own, which are made up, since they are simulated: a name from their profile, an email address on a Mimiq domain with a working inbox, and a password Mimiq sets for them. So a verification code or a confirmation link reaches them, and they can carry on.

A session ends when they say they are done, give up, get blocked by the site, or reach 15 steps. It counts as finished only when their own last steps show the task done, not because they say so.

The problems a newcomer hits and an insider never sees: a button that does nothing, a label that means something else to an outsider, an error message that does not say what to fix, a form that will not accept what people type, a required step with no reason given, or a price that appears only after the account is made.

Every click and form entry is recorded with what it did: moved the person on, changed nothing on screen, or failed. So a dead button stands out in the step-by-step view, next to what the person said about it.

An end-to-end test follows a script and checks that the flow works. It passes as long as the button does what the code says, even when no newcomer would find the button. A Mimiq flow checks whether someone who has never seen the site gets through, which is a different question, so most teams want both.

Session replay and funnel analytics show what real visitors already did, after launch. A flow runs before anyone real arrives, and each simulated person explains their choices in words. Once you have traffic, your analytics are the better evidence for what is happening.

Flows are checked in the same public register as everything else, and the results so far argue for using them as a usability check only. In one pre-registered run, simulated people browsing a real shop did what the real shopper did next on 8% of 200 steps, and a simple rule did better at guessing the kind of action.

In another, on real sign-up page tests with published results, flows showed people getting through both versions but could not tell which one won. So a flow shows where people like your visitors can get stuck. It does not forecast how many will finish, or which of two versions converts better.

They cannot log in to an existing account, sign in with Google or another account, or pay: Mimiq gives them no payment details. A CAPTCHA or bot check can stop them. Anyone stopped by one is marked as blocked by the site, and if it stops everyone, the flow fails and nothing is charged. A staging or preview address without bot protection works, as long as it is public.

Each person gets up to 15 steps, enough for a sign-up and the first screens after it, not a long setup. People take turns on shared browsers, so a flow takes a few minutes, and it uses 30 credits a person.

They really submit your forms, so each person who signs up leaves a test account, and on a store they can leave abandoned carts. Use a staging site if that matters, as long as it is public.