to begin a session. You should end up at the Connect session window (see Figure 2.2). The first time you use Acrobat Connect, click the Share My Screen button. That will trigger the download of a little plug-in that will allow you to use the screen sharing function. (This is the only time you’ll have to do it; after that, it should always launch using the plug-in, rather than a tab of your Web browser.)
2 Call your pilot user.
Figure 2.2
The Adobe Acrobat Connect session window: the big window is the user’s screen, and the smaller windows, from top to bottom, are the user’s webcam (optional), the participant list (including observers), chat, and notes.
1 Set up your user’s screen sharing. Tell your user to start the screen sharing session by going to connect.acrobat.com/XXXXX (again, XXXXX = your Connect account name) and join as a guest. (If you’re tech-savvy, you can shorten the URL using http://tinyurl.com or set up an easy-to-type redirect link in advance and tell your user to go there. When you’re reading a URL over the phone, it’s easy for listeners to get the letters confused, so the shorter, the better. It’s usually faster to do a careful “T-as-in-Tom, O-as-in-Orange” spelling to avoid errors.) Tell the user to click on the arrow in the upper-right corner of the Connect window to download the screen sharing plug-in and then tell him/her to click on the Share My Screen button that appears. You should be able to see the user’s screen in your session window now.
2 Begin the study! It’s just a pilot test, so do whatever you like: have the user show you how he/she uses your interface, watch him/her fill out a survey…anything. When you’re done, click the End Session button in the session window, and the screen sharing will end. No uninstalling is necessary for Adobe Connect. Here, you should practice the things you say to the participant when wrapping up the study, the most important being: “Thank you so much for participating, I really appreciate it,” and “I can no longer see your screen and will not be able to do so again.” We’ll cover more of these kinds of details later in the chapter. For now, you’re all done.
Preparing for a Real Study
So now you know what you need for a basic study: computer, high-speed Internet, phone, and some screen sharing software. Now let’s back up and talk more in detail about the function of each tool.
Screen Sharing
Usually, the hardest part of remote research is getting your users to successfully share their screen with you—that includes both obtaining their consent and getting them to set up the screen sharing tool. As with so many technical pursuits, the more attention you give to the setup ahead of time, the easier your life will be when you actually start calling people.
First, know this: about 15–30% of all the remote sessions you attempt to set up will fail for one reason or another (see Chapter10, “The Challenges of Remote Testing,” for more details on the kinds of challenges you’ll encounter). That’s just the wild world of the Internet, and this is why a lot of the articles on remote testing focus on the nuts and bolts of conducting sessions; a few years will have to pass before the technical details become less ofa pain.
Choosing the right screen sharing tool can be overwhelming when you’re not familiar with the pros and cons of each tool. Most practitioners who do lots of remote testing eventually choose one tool and stick with it, but you should try a couple before figuring out which one works for you (most offer free trials). Broadly, the most important considerations for a screen sharing tool are its compatibility and ease of setup for both the moderator and the participant. Browser and OS compatibility have a big impact on whom you’ll be able to talk to, and you probably don’t want to arbitrarily limit your recruiting pool by who can run your screen sharing software (unless the interface you’re testing happens to be platform specific, too, in which case it doesn’t matter). You want to make the setup process as quick and smooth as possible so that you don’t prolong the session or frustrate the user with tedious instructions.
For platform versatility, you can’t beat browser-based screen sharing solutions like Connect, GoToMeeting, and LiveLook, since they only require users to run a fairly recent browser, and the OS doesn’t matter. The only minor downside is that these solutions currently require users to have a Java-enabled browser; most are, but if some users don’t have it, having them set it up can be time-consuming, and they may not even want to.
The solutions that aren’t browser based are often the ones that require users to download and run an executable file or have a certain program installed (Skype, iChat). Downloading and installing files can be a security issue for users who are behind corporate firewalls, as well as a trust issue for users who don’t like the idea of installing things at the command of a voice on the other end of a telephone. If you decide to use screen sharing software that requires any heavy installation or user registration, you’ll probably want to arrange in advance for your users to dothat.
If you plan on having people observe your sessions remotely, screen sharing features may make that a lot easier. Most tools limit the number of observers; make sure that yours can support as many as you need. A handful of tools enable chatting between the observers and moderator, which is handy, but the participant should always be excluded from the chat, to keep distraction to a minimum. If it’s not possible to block the participant from the chat, you can use an instant messaging service to chat with clients behind the scenes.
On a final practical note, there’s cost to consider. Pricing structures differ from tool to tool but generally fall into a handful of categories. Adobe Connect and GoToMeeting offer subscription plans, which are best if you intend to conduct multiple usability testing sessions over the development of your interface (which we encourage), and they also offer free trials if you just plan on doing a one-off study. Tools like Skype (for international calls) charge just a few cents a minute, which is cost effective if you don’t plan on conducting usability studies regularly, but they make you buy a set number of minutes in advance. Watch out for additional charges you’ll incur if the screen sharing lacks a particular feature you need; for instance—LiveLook currently lacks support for observers to listen in on sessions, so you’d have to pony up for a conference call service, which can be pricey. And if you’re using your phone to dial internationally instead of a voice chat service like Skype, watch those long-distance charges.
For the full story on the state of remote research tools, check out Chapter 8. For now, Table 2.1 provides a quick comparison of some handy screen sharing solutions.
Table 2.1 Screen Sharing Tools at a Glance (Circa Mid-2009)*
* See Chapter 8 for more details.
Recording
Session recordings are useful if you want to be able to document, share, and closely analyze the testing sessions after the fact (bear in mind, though, that recording is not strictly essential for the purposes of running the study). Unlike in-person testing, in remote testing you can usually capture everything important about a session with just a simple software tool. Some screen sharing tools, like GoToMeeting and UserVue, have built-in recording functionality, and some Skype plug-ins will record Skype video as well (for example, eCamm’s Call Recorder for Mac). If recording functionality isn’t built in, you’ll need a screen recording application that allows you to capture both video and audio from your computer. Techsmith’s Camtasia Studio is a common one, although there are free applications like CamStudio as well. Most recording