Moderated Tools

• UserVue by TechSmith. This is our trusty stand-by for moderated one-on-one interviews. Enables you to view a participant’s screen in real-time while talking to them on the phone. Any number of observers can join in to watch the session as it happens. The service has integrated calling and chat, and at the end of a session, the calling and screen recording are automatically synced and rendered to a video file (either WMV or Morae’s proprietary RDG video format). You can buy either month-long or year-long licenses.

• LiveLook. A browser-based screensharing service. We like this tool because it’s pretty cheap (they charge using prepaid minutes), no download is required, and it runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux–as long as you’ve got Java, it’ll work. It’s also very lightweight, so if you’re testing on a slow connection, this is one of your best bets. Drawbacks: no recording, no audio, and you have to give your users the account login to let them share their screen, which means that you’ll have to switch the password fairly often if you want to keep the account secure.

• VULab by York University. An open-source remote usability tool which, like UserVue, allows you to record video and audio on your participants’ computers as they perform tasks. They said that they’d be releasing it earlier this year, but we’re still waiting on it, so yeah.

• Skype 2.8 for Mac OS X. A new free feature of the popular internet communication client. Screenshare and video chat integrated; relatively cheap international calling, free domestic calls. Requires all participants, observers, researchers to have the Skype client installed.

Unmoderated / Automated Tools

• ClickTale Beta. Records user interaction with webpages using javascript. Provides “movies” of “in-page” behavior of users, as well as “heat maps” that visualize how people are clicking, scrolling, and entering data. Relatively cheap!

• UZ Self-Serve Edition by UserZoom. UserZoom is an international user experience research company specializing in remote testing, and they’ve now made their remote research tools available for do-it-yourself studies. It’s a completely web-based tool that allows you to manage multiple UX projects, gather clickstream data, prompt users to perform website tasks, card sorts, surveys, and recruit users from either a panel or from your own website. They also offer full-service UX testing.

• WebEffective by Keynote. Another web-based tool for conducting in-depth customer experience, branding and market research studies. Users answer survey questions and complete tasks in pop-up windows, with no download required. Keynote employs a big panel of web users (the “Keynote Research Panel”) to provide quantitative clickstream and behavioral data, survey feedback, structured task completion data. You can also intercept users from your own website.

• m-pathy Tracks mouse-movements and clicks without installing anything on the user’s computer. It’s in German, so you might need to go here to figure out what the heck their website is saying.

• RelevantView Provides card sort, surveys and questionnaires with branching logic,  clickstreams, and more. Comes in self-, partial-, and full-service flavors; full-service gets you complete study management, from designing the survey to recruiting panels of users to fulfilling incentives to analyzing data. Probably really expensive.

• ChalkMark by OptimalWorkshop. A brand-new service that allows users to complete tasks on static images, providing “heat map” feedback similar to ClickTale’s. It takes a “keep it simple” approach by limiting each task to a single click on a single image, so it’s best for relatively simple testing.

• SMT (Simple Mouse Tracking) by Luis Leiva. An open-source project, providing mouse-tracking functionality similar to that of VULabs.

• ClickHeat by LabsMedia. Another open source project, providing heatmap functionality similar to that of VULabs and ClickTale.

• Userfocus. Browser-based service with no download or install required. Uses a panel of paid researchers.

While there are plenty of tools floating around to help you conduct one-on-one moderated interviews, if you’re just getting started with remote research, you may not want to invest in a ton of expensive software or subscription-based web services right off the bat. So let us show you a few handy ways to use more common or free tools and software to hack together some of the basic tools you’ll need to conduct user research. We’ll go task-by-task, and show you how to do things quickly and cheaply; we’ll even supply some of our very own tools. You are impressed.

Calling

One of the great benefits of remote testing is that you can test with users anywhere in the world, as long as they have a phone and internet connection. Unfortunately, phones still cost money to dial long distance, even using cell phones. What to do? Well, your users have internet connections, don’t they? A Skype membership is good if you’re going to be doing a lot of long-distance testing, and they also offer prepaid minutes if you’re just doing a few sessions.

Screensharing

It’s vital to be able to see your users’ screen during the session–that’s the heart of remote web research. Like we’ve said, UserVue is our preferred screensharing and recording solution, but if you’re not in the habit of doing remote studies regularly (which you should be, anyway), you might balk at the $150/month license fee. Not to worry–there’s tons of cheaper ways to screenshare. Silverback is a Mac-only  LiveLook, GoToMeeting, Windows Meeting Space (formerly NetMeeting) and Adobe Connect are all common screensharing apps, some of which support audio.

Recording

It’s good to also record the sessions so that you’re able to go back to them later and catch anything you may have missed. If you’re using UserVue, the recording is automatic, and you get a nice, beautifully synced WMV file right at the end of the session. But what if you’re just using LiveLook or GoToMeeting, which may not even support audio? Here’s where things can get a little hairy.

First, find some software that will allow you to record video and audio output on your computer; here at Bolt|Peters, we use Techsmith’s Camtasia, but free alternatives like CamStudio are also out there. Then, make sure that both the video and audio of the session are coming out of your computer; if you’re using Skype, that’s no problem; if you’re on a land phone, you’ll need to use some gadgets that will let you route the phone signal into your computer; we use a Hello Direct Pro Amplifier, which runs about $80 new, along with a JK Audio QuickTap phone tap, $60 new. Here’s a diagram illustrating how all of the pieces (phone, computer, amplifier, phone tap) fit together:

Once you’ve got both the screensharing and audio coming through your computer, fire up your recording software and go nuts.

Notetaking

Sure, you could just fire up Wordpad and type away, but if you’ve already got a nice recording of your sessions, you’re going to want to be able to track when in the video you were typing your notes out. Here’s where automatic time-stamped notes come in; it’s a little nitty-gritty, but it’s free, so check out our B|P blog post about it here!

Okay so did I just go broke or what

What would the equipment costs and expenses be, at the bare minimum, for a typical eight-user moderated study? I’m bout to spit some game:

Skype: 2.1 cents/min worldwide,  x 45 minute sessions x 8 users = $7.50, give or take (might as well get a subscription at that rate)

LiveLook: 2.5 cents/min x 45 x 8 = ~$9

CamStudio: free

Microphone headset, computer, internet connection: I was sort of hoping you already had these

Trillian for timestamped notetaking: free

TOTAL EQUIPMENT EXPENSES: ~$16.50

Hooo! Bear in mind that these are bare-bones essentials for a study; most studies will require some special doodad or another to make it work properly, and if you want really slick, hassle-free testing, well, that’ll cost you just like it always does. Still: a whole moderated remote study for the cost of a sushi dinner. Can’t hate that.

(Photo cropped from etohaholic on flickr)

WHAT YOU NEED:

• Landline phone
• Computer w/ Skype and UserVue
• Microphone headset for the computer
• Twix brand chocolate bar

LET’S DO THIS:

STEP 1:

Download and register for an account.

STEP 2: Login to Skype and start a UserVue session, like normal.

STEP 3:

Click “Call” in UserVue.

STEP 4:

Put your desk phone number in as Your Phone Number put the Skype call-in number as Participant’s Phone Number, and then click “Dial”.

STEP 5: Have the first Twix bar (there are two in a package). You’ll need the energy for the next few steps.

STEP 6:

Pick up your desk phone when it rings, and then dial “1″ when the voice prompts you to do so.

STEP 7:

Answer the call in Skype. Your desk phone will be connected to your Skype line.

STEP 8:

Mute and silence the desk phone to avoid getting an echo. You won’t be speaking through it at all.

STEP 9:

In Skype, click Add Caller, and enter the participant’s number. If the built-in international line menu doesn’t work for any reason, then try setting the country to US and then typing in 011, the desired country code, then the participant’s number. Click Call.

STEP 10:

When the user picks up, begin the session. Direct him/her through the UserVue process as usual.

A WORD OF WARNING

Though it works and you can usually talk to your users just fine, there is a drop in the sound quality of the UserVue recordings. Also, the usual caveats apply when calling internationally with Skype, i.e. it drops out sometimes. You have been warned!