I've also used real-time remote user testing with satisfactory results. We developed a script for the sessions which we ran via Webex and phone. After some initial questions to identify the tester - what version of the product they use, what their typical activities are, frquency of use - we handed over control of the app and posed a series of tasks. We recorded the Webex and voice call, but we also used two evaluators - one to conduct the session and one to take notes.
We gathered a lot of useful information that enabled us to identify specific factors to improve and also validated many of the benefits we expected the feature under test to provide. I think you do have to bring a little more empathy to the process when working this way, at least if you're not on a video conference. There were times we suspected from the mouse movements we observed that there was some uncertainty to probe, but of course we didn't have any facial or body language cues. If there's no budget even for Webex, you might look into Yugma ( www.yugma.com). -- Faith Peterson [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Dec 6, 2007 8:27 PM, Craig Peters <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Dec 6, 2007, at 5:43 PM, Todd Zaki Warfel wrote: > >> > >> I'm not sure how much faith > >> I would put into people using the site and recording themselves > >> talking about it for usability testing. >> > Conducting remote usability (screen sharing) with a real moderator > (phone) can save money and time compared to in-lab testing. Bolt > Peters and others do this (www.boltpeters.com). Also, I've recently > conducted some guerilla testing along the RITE approach (http:// > en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RITE_Method). > > craig > ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
