Book Image

Remote Usability Testing

By : Inge De Bleecker, Rebecca Okoroji
Book Image

Remote Usability Testing

By: Inge De Bleecker, Rebecca Okoroji

Overview of this book

Usability testing is a subdiscipline of User Experience. Its goal is to ensure that a given product is easy to use and the user's experience with the product is intuitive and satisfying. Usability studies are conducted with study participants who are representative of the target users to gather feedback on a user interface. The feedback is then used to refine and improve the user interface. Remote studies involve fewer logistics, allow participation regardless of location and are quicker and cheaper to execute compared to in person studies, while delivering valuable insights. The users are not inhibited by being in a new environment under observation; they can act naturally in their familiar environment. Remote unmoderated studies additionally have the advantage of being independent of time zones. This book will teach you how to conduct qualitative remote usability studies, in particular remote moderated and unmoderated studies. Each chapter provides actionable tips on how to use each methodology and how to compensate for the specific nature of each methodology. The book also provides material to help with planning and executing each study type.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Dedication
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
8
What to Consider When Analyzing and Presenting the Study Results
Index

Preparing for the study


In the previous chapters, we discussed finding participants and how many participants to invite to the study. The next step is to schedule the sessions. Before doing so, the study planning needs to be reviewed, because scheduling participants requires a lot of effort, and rescheduling participants not only requires additional effort but often results in losing participants.  

 

 

Number of participants

We like to use around 10 participants per study, although we often go as low as 5 or as high as 15 participants. Since the sessions are moderated, the additional effort per participant is significant and must be taken into account in terms of the cost and schedule. 

Days for the sessions

Based on the project schedule, it is important to finalize the dates for the sessions. We've had stakeholders who wanted to change the session dates, for instance, because they wanted to wait for the next release, in the case of a product under development. Changing the session dates requires...