Remote Usability Testing

Gain actionable insights from qualitative remote studies to improve user experience

Key Features

Understand the different usability testing methodologies and their strengths and weaknesses
Master the execution of remote studies
Learn how to analyze and present study results

Book DescriptionUsability 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.

What you will learn

Choose the most suitable remote study methodology
Establish a clear goal for the study 
Plan the study execution 
Understand recruitment logistics, expectations and compensation
Set up and moderate remote studies 
Write good tasks and questions for each methodology 
Analyze and document the study results 
Deliver results that align with the goal for the study

Who this book is forThis book is for user experience (UX) professionals familiar with traditional in-person usability testing methodologies, or for UX designers with no prior exposure to user research and usability testing. Customer experience professionals or product managers who want to understand remote usability testing will also find this book useful. No knowledge of remote usability testing is needed.

Author Biography

Inge De Bleecker has been designing and testing web, mobile, and voice experiences for more than 20 years. She builds and leads UX teams and evangelizes UX throughout organizations. She is fascinated by the communication between humans and devices. Her mantras are “design for everyone” and “test early and often.” Inge has run over 200 remote studies across different industries, languages, and regions. She finds remote studies a powerful and effective way to gather user feedback that would otherwise be difficult to collect. Rebecca Okoroji has been working in UX since 2000. She is passionate about the need for providing exceptional digital experiences and has since expanded her focus to encompass customer experience. She believes that there is no such thing as a user error, only badly designed interfaces. Customer/user feedback is essential to building a good UX, and remote unmoderated usability testing is a cost-effective and efficient way of collecting this. Rebecca has conducted over 100 such studies in globally dispersed projects for a large variety of industries and has a wealth of experience to draw on.