Re: [Usability] Cheap Open Source Morae Alternative

[Jan-Christoph Borchardt <inquata googlemail com>]

On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 1:08 PM, Calum Benson <calum benson oracle com> wrote:
> On 20/07/2010 22:29, Jan-Christoph Borchardt wrote:
>>
>> If we want good usability, we need to get open usability testing tools
>> going (again)!
>
> While such tools can certainly be useful for certain types of studies, I
> would have to say we don't *need* them. It's perfectly possible to do great
> usability testing without any tools other than your eyes and a notepad, and
> in many cases, it's a lot less hassle (not to mention potentially less
> intimidating for the participant).

I always use eyes and notepad even when recording. Then, when I am
quickly jotting something down, many little things happen that I
oversee but are crucial. Besides that, I can not watch the screen and
the user’s face simultaneously.

It may take double to triple the time to conduct the study and watch
it again afterwards, but it gets much more clear then why exactly
things go wrong. Even a simple tool like Pongo can help immensely (at
least for me it does ;).


> What we certainly *do* need is more people doing more usability testing with
> more participants. Fancy tools won't magically make that happen -- we just
> need to JFDI and share the results :) Once a critical mass of people are
> doing that, the requirements for tools will probably fall out a lot more
> naturally anyway...

As Jakob Nielsen wrote at http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000319.html:
»As you add more and more users, you learn less and less because you
will keep seeing the same things again and again.«
Quality has priority over quantity. If you get over 2–3 users, time
will be better invested in reviewing session recordings than in
further testing. Then it’s time to fix problems and continue testing
later.


We can always do testing without it, be it for intimacy reasons or
hassle. But we already have it and it works much easier than stitching
together output of Cheese and recordmydesktop.



And if anything,
> we just need to JFDI and share the results :)

+1, here you go :)
https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=1GV0xJ18SbPsMDt_h_aj6PSKXhgrM1-KEmeBPnuWlHEs

And for everyoe who hasn’t seen it yet, Charline’s Empathy Usability Report:
http://mairin.wordpress.com/2010/02/25/charlines-empathy-usability-report/

Quick idea: What about coupling the UX advocates project with usability testing?