Remote-facilitated-user-testing in multiple global locations

This is brief story about how Webex became the answer to my complex user-testing problems.

I had an interesting XD situation recently which I thought I’d share in case you end up in a similar position. The client I am working with is based in the UK. Some of the users we wanted to test with are dispersed around the globe. What’s more we have an offshore development team working in India to build our product. So the issue was how to get rapid end-user feedback on the design concepts in development without blowing the entire development budget on travel. It was also essential to us that members of the development team experienced the user-testing first hand so that they could appreciate and learn about the users behaviours, mind-sets and mental models.

I have used a number of remote testing software packages previously such as Loop11 or Usabilla to get feedback on a user-interface in development. However most of these packages offer unfacilitated, or software-facilitated test options. While remote unfacilitated testing is great the downside is that there is no opportunity to explore the users perceptions or ask the probing questions that come as a direct result of observation of their reactions or behaviours. The kind of research that is pivotal in early stage UI development. Certainly none of them were offering the ability to have multiple people in multiple geo-dispersed location logged into a single session simultaneously.

I knew there must be a solution out there somewhere, either that or I’d stumbled across a potential new product idea that could make me wealthy. To my surprise the answer had been under my nose all the time in a product I had only really associated with business communications and hadn’t previously associated with user-testing. Webex! The business communication tool. It allowed me to do everything I needed including:

• Ability to support multiple users in different geo-locations simultaneously in one session
• Ability to stream webcam and audio contribution from multiple or limited participants in the session
• Ability to view the participants screen and interaction with the screens to be tested, while simultaneously viewing a webcam of their facial responses and listening to verbal cues.
• Ability to record both audio and video tracks from the session and access them or share them later.
• Ideally software-as-a-service, rather than client-side thin or thick applications that the user needs to install.

Webex had it all! What’s more it was easy to set up*, control during the session and because I was fortunate enough to have access to an existing corporate Webex account  there were no additional overheads or expensive subscriptions. Perfect!

*The easy to set up part comes with the advice of enquiring with your users in advance of the session about their operating system and internet connectivity. If your users are on a fairly standard OS with ‘decent’ connectivity then there should be no set up required. However, as according to Murphy’s Law, we didn’t check in advance and our first participant was using Linux and had low connectivity and the combination meant we had to abandon that particular session! Doh!