Recent Entries
Creative Ways to Use Unmoderated User Research
Our fellow bay area local Brian McClain of Metric Lab has written a great summary of how to use un-moderated, AKA automated, AKA self-moderated, AKA UX tools, in combination with other methods and over long periods of time. Here is the whole article over at UX Matters.
Remote Facilitator Guide
This is the latest Bolt | Peters facilitator guide (AKA Moderator Script. Whatever) template. Janice Bradford was nice enough to read our book and reminded us that we promise templates on this site. Well here we go. The full text is below and if you want a nicely formatted word doc you can download that here. Before you get started interviewing a remote participant, you’ll want to paste in the information for that person from the Ethnio screener or whatever recruiting method you used below:
Introduction & Setup (3 minutes)
Hi, this is ____ from ACME calling in regards to the survey you filled out at acme.com a few minutes ago . Do you have time now to participate in a 30 minute phone interview? Are you able to use your web browser and your phone at the same time? Great! One thing about the call today, is that we’re going to ask you to join an online meeting so we can follow along with your screen movements, just for the duration of this interview. Is that okay?
Read more…
The 5 Categories of Remote UX Tools
This is the one slide from my Remote Research presentation I get asked about the most so I thought I would call it out:
Adventures in Remote Usability by Ellen Beldner
My new homegirl Ellen Beldner wrote this nice summary of her experience conducting recent remote user testing. In this article she goes so far as to agree with me about facial expressions in research. Rock on, Ellen, rock on.
Slides from Nate’s IxDA & UPA & SVA Talks
Slides from Nate’s IxDA & UPA & SVA talks in Los Angeles and New York in May and June of 2010. Most of these won’t make any damn sense but more information is in the actual book here: http://bit.ly/ZlDoQ
Slides from Kyle Soucy’s UPA presentation
Kyle Soucy’s presentation on unmoderated testing at the Boston UPA Conference. You can see the handout here.
New Tools AVALANCHE
There is some kind of huge development craze going on in the remote / online usability tools market. My guess is that usertesting.com has inspired some of this, along with the perceived market for interface research. Here are the new tools that have launched within the last month or two. If we are missing any drop a line!:
- Userlytics. Another recording tool that records users’ facial expressions and audio comments as well as logging their webcam video (!) and screen movements on the website, according to a text script that you give participants. Then you watch flash videos of their experience and read summaries. Free trial, $299 per 5 testers and $47 for each additional tester.
- Trymyui. Very similar to usertesting.com and userlytics - they find users for you, rate them, and make sure they are good at recording their own thoughts while they user your site or prototype. Free trial and then $25 per user.
- IntuitionHQ. Very similar to Usabilla, you can create tasks and record where people click on a static images. The difference is that IntuitionHQ automatically creates static images of your live site, hence making it seem like people are interacting with a live site. They are not. But that’s cool, we actually really like these kind of tools for creating cool heatmaps of where people click on static images. $9 per test with unlimited users.
- Plainframe. This is the first UX tool I’ve heard of that let’s you create an interactive IA and site structure for users to interact with and track their behavior. You quickly put your navigation structure into a clickable “white site.”1 They record the interactions as data for analysis, and let you play them back so you can see how the user interacts with the site dynamically. In Closed Beta as of May, 2010.
Workshop on Remote UX Research – May 6th
Come hang with us in San Francisco or attend remotely on May 6th from 9am – 4:30pm PST. We’re holding our third Escape The Lab workshop on remote UX research methods and tools. You get hands-on training with the latest moderated and un-moderated remote UX research tools.
Space is limited as we’re only allowing 10 in-person and 10 remote attendees, so register soon. It’s about 50% sold-out right now. Also, we’re giving away two FREE spots for whoever tweets the best answer to why they love or hate remote research with the tag #ETLAB.
Date: Thursday, May 6th, 2010
Time: 9am – 4:30pm
Place: Bolt | Peters User Experience at 576 Natoma Street, San Francisco, CA
Cost: $399 In-person or $199 Remote. $299 for URF Alumni.
More info: http://escapethelab.com/
Hope to see you there!