On Oct 9, 2009, at 3:04 PM, David Mulder wrote:
For what it's worth, I have used remote, unmoderated testing (via
userfly.com) to *inform and create better moderated testing plans*.
That's interesting.
While I understand this on some level: You see things in the userfly
data that make you say, "We should explore that further...", I'm
wondering if that's the most efficient way to discover this stuff.
After all, a tool like Userfly, while it comes with an inexpensive
license, is not cheap to use. You have to create the test plan, figure
out the panel of participants, integrate the userfly js into your
code, solicit the participants, and then (probably most expensive of
all) go through all the data it generates. Finally, because you only
have some very *raw* data to work with, absent of any motivation or
discriminatory notion of the participants (what makes one participant
different than another?), you have to decide what data is interesting
to explore and what's a red herring?
I'm wondering, if when your done, if you've really saved any time
versus some moderated approach, where you can get to real inferences
much faster.
That being said, I firmly agree with Jared (and not out of
obsequiousness)
that remote, unmoderated testing *alone* can help us understand user
motivation & behavior.
Can? Can't, maybe? Or am I not understanding what you're agreeing with?
Assuming you meant "can't", I never buy this "you can't use method x
alone" argument. My thinking is, if you can't use the method alone,
then what is it adding to the equation? There are plenty of methods
that give me great mileage when I do use them alone. What do I get by
augmenting, other than a tool that always agrees with what I already
know?
Jared
Jared M. Spool
User Interface Engineering
510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845
e: [email protected] p: +1 978 327 5561
http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks Twitter: @jmspool
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