Remote Usability Testing

I just finished up a rather intensive research phase for a client recently. One of the goals of the research was go find out how peope are finding information at work. The client is rather large and has employees all over the US, Europe, and Asia. We worked with the business units to determine an appropriate sample size and representation.

Over the course of two weeks, we interviewed close 42 participants. About half of the participants were within an hour from us. For those participants we conducted face-to-face observational interviews. But the rest were located across the US and in Europe. We couldn’t have done this without remote methods.

For the remote observational interviews, we used a combination of SameTime (it’s a kind of instant messenger) and a standard phone call (VoIP). While scheduling participants in Europe was a challenge, the remote observation method worked really well. We were able to see the participants’ native environments, watching them use their bookmarks, browse shared drive spaces, launch applications, sign-in, etc.

Remote methods allowed us to observe there native environments without either one of us having to travel. It also gave us the ability to do a much larger sampling – especially with geographically dispersed participants.

Remote methods aren’t without their drawbacks, however. Most of the remote methods out there today like Ethnio and Morea only work on Windows and require an installed application. I’m a bit aprehensive asking a participant to install something on their machine so we can observe them. I like to leave their system untouched. Fortunately, in this case, the client already has a standard application installed that allows for remote observation. So, it wasn’t an issue.

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m first and foremost and advocate for face-to-face methods. I’ve just found that the native environment will reveal details of how and why that you simply cannot get with a survey, or sterile lab environment. But if you can’t do a face-to-face, then remote with the native environment is your next best thing.