Practitioners-Guide-User-Experience-Design

of twenty TV stations, shows, and genres of various depth, such as sports versus football
versus NFL.
Data collection through online analytics is a way of testing a large number of live
users. This is done by using plug-and-play services like Google Analytics or Chartbeat to
monitor activity over time or, in the case of the latter, in real time. You see where users are
most active, which features they’re ignoring, what parts of the day they’re visiting, which
ads are getting clicks, and much more.
Remote testing with tools like Silverback, Usability.com, or Userfeel.com is a way of
conducting task analysis and scenario-based testing from afar. In these types of tests users
are given a specific task, like composing and sending an email. The tester then observes
the user’s efforts through recorded video, a screen-sharing program, or maybe over a
video phone service like Skype. In one form of a remote test, the “think aloud” method,
you ask the user to describe what she’s doing and report on the experience as she goes.
This method can also be used for person-to-person tests. The distance helps make sure
you’re not giving the user any hints or leading pointers about how to do the task. It also
allows you to test more users relatively inexpensively and from a wide range of locations;
you can see how people in urban areas use your product differently from those in smaller
towns, for example. For remote tests, I’ve found the hardest part is getting users to talk
about their thought process, so careful examination of their interactions, instincts, and
emotions is absolutely necessary.
A long-established type of user test is focus groups, but I advise against these because
a good amount of research has shown that they are ineffective in getting reliable user
feedback. This is for complicated reasons, among them that the situation is so removed
from real life that members of the group tend to influence one another’s answers, and that
for whatever reasons, people often misrepresent their true behavior or feelings about a
product idea or prototype in this setting.