Running usability tests across the GCC

Usability testing in the Gulf is not simply usability testing translated. The methods travel well, but the logistics, the language and the social context around a research session all shift. Teams that treat a GCC study as a copy of a London or New York study tend to end up with thin findings and a high no-show rate.

This guide covers what actually changes, and what to do about it.

Start with the device, not the screen size

Mobile dominates across the GCC, and it dominates differently by market. Smartphone penetration in Saudi Arabia and the UAE is among the highest in the world, and for a large share of users the phone is not the primary device, it is the only device.

That has direct consequences for your test:

• Test on the device people actually use, not a desktop browser resized to look like a phone.
• Expect one-handed use and thumb reach to matter more than they do in your desktop analytics.
• Check performance on mid-range Android handsets, not just the newest iPhone. Load time is part of the experience you are testing.

If you only have budget to test one platform, test mobile web or the mobile app.

Language is a research decision, not a translation task

Running a session in a participant's second language quietly changes your results. People hesitate more, they explain less, and they are more likely to blame themselves rather than criticise the interface. You lose exactly the candour you ran the study to get.

A few practical rules:

1. Let participants choose the language at recruitment, and record that choice.
2. Match the moderator to the language, including dialect where it matters. Gulf, Levantine and Egyptian Arabic are not interchangeable in casual conversation.
3. If the product interface is English but your users think in Arabic, that gap is itself a finding. Note where they pause to translate a label in their head.
4. Budget more time for bilingual sessions. Switching languages mid-session costs minutes.

For right to left interfaces, watch for layout habits rather than just mirrored pixels. Where does the eye go first? Which side does a back action feel like it should live on?

Scheduling around the week and the calendar

The working week in most of the GCC runs Sunday to Thursday, though the UAE moved to a Monday to Friday week with a half day Friday. If you schedule out of a European calendar you will propose slots on people's weekend without realising it.

Beyond the week:

• Prayer times break the day into predictable gaps. Avoid scheduling a session that runs into one.
• Ramadan changes working hours, energy levels and evening availability substantially. Sessions often move later in the evening. Plan around it rather than through it.
• Summer sees heavy travel out of the region, particularly July and August.

Always confirm the timezone in writing. Gulf Standard Time is UTC plus 4, Saudi Arabia is UTC plus 3, and a participant in Cairo is somewhere else again.

Recruitment is where most GCC studies fail

The population is highly diverse. In the UAE, expatriates make up the large majority of residents, which means a sample of ten people can easily contain eight nationalities, five first languages and wildly different levels of familiarity with your category.

That diversity is an asset if you screen for it deliberately and a problem if you ignore it. Decide up front whether nationality, years in country, or language proficiency is a variable you care about, then screen on it.

Be specific about who you need. A screener that asks whether someone shops online is nearly useless. A screener that asks how many online purchases they made in the last month, and from which categories, gives you something to select on.

Incentives and no-shows

Under-incentivised studies in the region see high no-show rates. People agree politely and then do not attend. Pay properly, confirm the day before, and send a reminder with the join link an hour ahead.

Pay in a way that actually reaches people. Bank transfer expectations differ by market, and a payment method that is frictionless in one country can be unusable in another.

Moderating with the grain of the culture

Direct negative feedback about someone's work is uncomfortable in many contexts, and more so in some Gulf settings. If you introduce yourself as the designer, you have already reduced the amount of criticism you will hear.

Techniques that help:

• Say plainly that you did not build the product and cannot be offended.
• Ask people to think aloud about what they expect to happen before they tap, not whether they like it.
• Use tasks rather than opinions. Watching someone fail to find the returns policy tells you more than asking whether the navigation is clear.
• Let silence sit. The pause before an honest answer is often longer than you are comfortable with.

> The goal is not to make participants comfortable enough to be polite. It is to make them comfortable enough to be honest.

Reporting so the findings survive the handover

Record the language of each session, the device, the market and the participant's familiarity with the category. When a stakeholder later asks whether a finding applies to Saudi users on Android, you want to be able to answer.

Separate what you observed from what you infer. A stakeholder who disagrees with your interpretation can still act on a clean observation.

A workable default plan

For a first GCC usability study, this setup rarely goes wrong:

1. Five to eight participants per market, per distinct user type.
2. Mobile first, on the participant's own device.
3. Sessions in the participant's preferred language, with a matched moderator.
4. Forty five minutes, scheduled Sunday to Thursday, outside prayer times.
5. Task based, with the moderator explicitly distanced from the design.

Small samples find the big problems. Run the study, fix what you find, and run it again.

Recruiting participants for your study

If sourcing the right people is the bottleneck, that is the part we handle. UsersArabia recruits vetted participants across the Middle East and North Africa, with screening on demographics, language and behaviour, and you can run the sessions yourself or ask us to run them for you.

Browse the platform or see how pricing works.