We use this approach as well here at Cornell. Our usability group has tried a variety of techniques, including using Morae and writing detailed reports for clients, but having clients observe live from a remote location seems to engage them more. It's become a popular means of testing. One note, though: this method gets called "discount" usability testing, but we found that label to be very inaccurate! We call it "raw" usability instead, which I think better describes the unprocessed flow of information from tester to client.

By the way, we also use Macs for most of our testing, and I don't think that it's led to inordinate amounts of confusion. I would recommend running tests in Firefox or Chrome, though, and not Safari. And on a laptop, definitely plug in a mouse so that testers don't have to rely on the trackpad!

— Matt


--------
Matt Connolly
Application Developer, CUL-IT
Cornell University Library
218 Olin Library | Ithaca, NY  14853
(607) 256-4209

On Feb 28, 2014, at 6:06 AM, Nadaleen F Tempelman-Kluit <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Ronan-
> That's exactly what we do here at NYU Libraries and it works really well.
> We have observers in another room taking notes in real time as the tests
> are in progress in another part of the library, using GoToMeeting.
> Let me know if you want more details.
> 
> 
> On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 2:14 AM, Ronan McHugh <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
>> Steve Krug recommends GoToMeeting in his book (Rocket Surgery Made Easy).
>> They've got a 30 day free trial so we're going to try it out next week on
>> some of our colleagues to see if it's worth the price. Basically what we
>> want is the ability to capture the screen and sound and to play this live
>> for the developers in another room, so that we can all observe together. I
>> looked at Silverback, but I think getting users to do a usability test on
>> an unfamiliar device (i.e. a Mac) can only lead to problems and confusion.
>> I'll let you know how we get on.
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> 
>> Ronan McHugh
>> Software Developer
>> Royal Library of Denmark
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Nadaleen Tempelman-Kluit
> Head, User Experience (UX) Department
> Bobst Library, New York University
> [log in to unmask]
> (212) 998-2469
> Sign up to help us test our interfaces & get an iTunes gift card!
> <https://library.nyu.edu/ux/>