Below is a list of software web apps and tools which can be used for both moderated and automated remote research. For a recent in-depth review of several of these tools, our friends at UX Booth have written a great review of UX applications – check them out.

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 a month-long license for $149. Note: TechSmith has made it known that UserVue may not be around after mid-2010; be warned!

• GoToMeeting. A popular web conferencing service which can easily be adapted for moderated remote research studies. It’s quick for users to setup, requires only a lightweight, temporary Java plug-in download for all attendees (no .exe file necessary), comes with free conference calling, and supports observing. It also enables presenters to give remote control of the keyboard and mouse, which can be useful in certain testing circumstances (a technique we call “reverse screensharing”, which is described in Chapter 9 of our book!).

• 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.

Self-Moderated Tools

• Open Hallway is tricky to categorize, because it’s a qualitative tool that records the user’s voice and screen movements, but you can’t watch live. However, the intended use is that you don’t sit on the phone with each person.

• UserTesting.com. They recruit participants from a panel and record a video of their browsing with audio, so it’s not live observation, but you get the recordings of each session and it’s only $39/user. So it’s think-aloud comments that are captured and synced with videos of their Web site behavior as they perform tasks of your choosing. Videos are downloadable, editable, embeddable, and can be annotated with comments. You can also see users’ demographics and system info. Users are recruited by UserTesting.com from a preselected panel and rated to make sure they do good sessions.

• 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.

Automated Tools

• Loop¹¹ is a web-based user-experience testing tool, allowing companies to conduct online, un-moderated user testing on any kind of digital interface. Loop¹¹ is not a survey or web analytics tool, but a user experience tool… helping you to understand user behavior.

• Usabilla – Collect feedback on any webpage, mockup, sketch, or image by uploading pages or images that you can have participants click through. Usabilla generates cool heat maps on where people clicked as well as  task performance metrics.

• ClickTale. 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.

• WhatUsersDo.com. Similar idea to UserTesting but looks like more of a UK base of participants for now. You can set a task for our testers and we record their screens and spoken thoughts as they complete that task. You can then watch online videos of their screens and voices.

• ChalkMark by OptimalWorkshop. A brand-new service that allows users to complete tasks on static images, providing “heat map” feedback similar to ClickTale’s.

• Webnographer by FeraLabs. Tracks user behavior on your website or prototype. Can collect web analytics and info on clicks, mouse hovering, keystrokes, page scrolling, browser resizing, back presses, time in each form item, errors per item, time on page, pages visited, task completion rates, time on task. Pricing on request.

• IntuitionHQ by Boost New Media. Post screenshots of designs, record where users click. Only five bucks per test for unlimited responses.

• QualVu by QualVu Inc. Weird service that lets you do online qualitative research by allowing users to submit videos and participate in focus groups via webcam.

  

• 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.

• Clixpy. Makes slick recordings of user behavior on your site, including clicks, scrolling, form filling, and AJAX.

• Testled. Like Clixpy, makes recordings of user behavior on your site using Javascript. Now in invite-only beta.

• m-pathy A remote usability tool that 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.

• ABtests.com by Bokardo, Performable, and KISSmetrics. Run (duh) A/B tests to compare the performance of different versions of your website designs. Still in beta.

• UTE (Usability Testing Environment) by MindDesign. UTE is a tool that allows you to build and administer scenario-based usability tests to test websites and web applications.  No installation or limit on number of users tested. More details to come after its release in early 2010.