Camilla Grov is passionate about users and user testing

- "Hallaien!" says Camilla Grov in her native Bergenese over Google Hangout. Despite working from home recently, the UX designer has settled in well at Dekode since she started in November 2019. So much so, in fact, that she will now be in charge of user testing of websites. But where did this love of users and testing come from? We had a chat with her.

With users in focus

- "I guess it started when I was studying. I've always been interested in technology, but I hadn't realized that this was something that could turn into a career," she laughs.

She was introduced to the field of interaction design while studying for a bachelor's degree in New Media at the University of Bergen. That's when she felt she was on to something important: involving the user in how products should look and function. 

- A little light bulb went on for me. I thought it was very strange that designers and developers were creating things that users were not involved in developing. It's so easy for people to get excited about their own ideas, but when it's launched they don't understand why it didn't work optimally. They are blinded by their own starting point, instead of realizing that together with the users you create better products. For me, working with users became something I was passionate about and wanted to learn more about. 

User Experience

Camilla therefore chose to follow the user trail further. She took a master's degree in interaction design at Gjøvik University College (now NTNU). 

- Interaction designer, or UX designer (User Experience), is a relatively new role that I first heard about when I was studying. Here, you're guided by the user's needs rather than just the aesthetics. It's about involving users as much as possible and in the best possible way. They provide valuable feedback, which in turn allows us to develop better websites. 

When Camilla joined Dekode in November 2019, she came from the media house ABC Startsiden. There she had worked as a UX designer and as both project manager and product owner. She had become well accustomed to testing websites and apps, both through direct meetings and reviews with users, through one-on-one interviews, in groups and through online user testing. 

Valuable insights through testing

- Testing helps customers gain valuable insights from their users about why and how they use their products. That way, you can identify errors, avoid developing useless functionality and revise the design before such revisions become too costly. In other words, it's expensive to create something that isn't used," says Camilla. 

At Dekode , she has the main responsibility for testing our products, which is done through both quantitative and qualitative surveys. 

- We test in early phases so that we haven't already spent a lot of time creating a complicated solution. We have a general desire to work more data-driven in Dekode and to build decisions based on the data we collect. This is also a need we see that our customers have. They can come to us with a desire to work data-driven. They want to test and are open to what we recommend based on this," Camilla concludes.

Want to know more about user testing?

Here you can read more about how we work with testing in Dekode

For questions and other inquiries - send us an email to [email protected]