First-click testing
Also called first click test, click test, click map, heat map
Showing people a design and asking where they would click first to do something, then timing and mapping that click.
The first click predicts the rest: people who start down the right path usually finish the task, and people who start wrong mostly do not. So one click on a static picture of a page, asked as a task (“Where would you go to change your plan?”), tests navigation before anything is built.
Read three things: where the clicks landed (a heat map), what share landed in the right area, and how long the first click took. A right answer reached slowly is a sign of hesitation that a success rate alone hides.
Mark the areas that count as correct before looking at the clicks, so the result cannot be fitted to the answer you hoped for.
Where it goes wrong
Leading tasks. A task that repeats the label on the button (“Click Upgrade to upgrade”) measures reading, not findability; describe the goal in the user's words instead.