Remote User Testing Article at ALA

A List Apart has posted an article this week by Nate Bolt titled Quick and Dirty Remote User Testing. He is a co-author of Remote Research, published this year by Rosenfeld Media.

In the article he discusses techniques and tools for conducting remote UX, usability and design testing. While he is right to state that this doesn’t take the place of being on-site and running a thorough test, this is, as the title states, quick and dirty. He outlines three general methods with a quick overview of techniques and links to tools. The methods are based on the humorous but practical principles of:

1. If you like people;
2. If you like machines better than people;
3. If you like people, just not talking with them.

He even thoughtfully provides a link to a Google spreadsheet of every remote research tool [the document is deleted, but the original URL is in the source code] he knows of. As a bonus (and if you like the article), there is a link at the bottom for 20% off his book. I’d tell you the code, but that defeats the purpose of reading the article.