David Cummings on Startups

User Experience Testing with Skype Screen Sharing

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David Cummings

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One of the simplest, cheapest, and most effective user experience and product testing things you can do is with Skype screen sharing. It works so well because the person on the other end shares their screen, and with Skype you can’t take control of their desktop, so you can only watch what they do. The key is to ask them to accomplish tasks on a generic level (e.g. create a new blog post) and sit back and watch them work. You’ll be amazed at what you notice and value you gain from the questions they ask — they don’t have the same tunnel vision you do being so passionate about your application.

Here are some quick tips for user experience testing with Skype screen sharing:

  • Don’t share your screen with them — make them share their screen and walk through things on their own while you watch
  • Ask them to accomplish tasks and take at least 60 seconds after they get stuck before helping — them getting stuck and trying different options is great UI feedback
  • Once you’ve had them go through different tasks, then take them through the product and go over the most important features describing the functionality — this is a cathartic exercise in that talking through it out loud with someone who hasn’t seen the app before helps you personally see new issues
  • Do this with a new person on a weekly basis and then move to monthly as the product matures

One-way Skype screen sharing is the digital equivalent of one-mirrors for user testing — only it is free and significantly easier. My recommendation is for entrepreneurs and product managers to incorporate this into their product development process.

What else? What are some other tips for user experience testing with Skype screen sharing?

Comments

7 responses to “User Experience Testing with Skype Screen Sharing”

  1. Denis Baranov Avatar
    Denis Baranov

    David, have you tried recording the shared screen? Did you use something generic like CamStudio or Microsoft Expression Encoder or a dedicated Skype recorder?
    How do you take notes during these sessions?

    Reply
    1. David Cummings Avatar
      David Cummings

      That’s a good idea Denis. I haven’t tried recording it but that would be very helpful.

      Reply
  2. Mark Travis Avatar
    Mark Travis

    David, I’m another Atlanta startup, and we have a product that we are about to release that performs usability. This is great that you can do this with Skype and I’m glad you pointed this out. I will recommend this to our customers as a great way to get started in usability testing.

    Our product will be able to record not only the screen, but also the users face and keyboard/hands if you have extra cameras set up. All video streams will be recorded and synchronized, and the notes that you take become a mindmap that you can use to navigate back to parts of the video that you want to show someone else. Ours uses MS Expression Encoder 4 Pro, and also products from Epiphan or any number of video sources. I’m still building our website, so it’s terrible right now, but please watch http://www.foresailtech.com for our “grand opening” in the next few weeks.

    I hope you don’t mind this shameless plug! But I think user experience observation is an area that goes overlooked so often. You can have an absolutely great software system, but if the UI is cludgy, you will loose to your “prettier” competitors if they are close in functionality.

    I think Skype screen sharing is a very viable way, and I will tell our customers about it. (Contrary to conventional wisdom! 🙂 )

    Reply
    1. Denis Baranov Avatar
      Denis Baranov

      Mark, why do you think that recording a user’s face & hands is important to UI/UX testing? To be honest, your description has no value proposition to me because there are many ways to record the screen during testing.

      Reply
      1. Mark Travis Avatar
        Mark Travis

        Denis, that’s a great question, thanks for asking! If you only need to record the screen, then you probably have many ways to do this, including free.

        We developed this software with one of the nation’s leading Usability companies, User Insight, which is also an Atlanta company. It is very useful to see the user’s hands and face when you want to judge reactions to what they are doing with your software, be it web pages or local applications. It’s very similar to the “science” used in the (now cancelled) series “Lie to me”.

        Many people are not good at communicating by voice what is bothering them about a web page or software application. It helps greatly to see their facial expressions as they follow scripts or prompts to find or navigate to certain areas. If you are only recording the screen and the mouse, you might miss tell-tale signs of usability problems. Same with the hands and the mouse. If someone turns their palms up and fingers out, that probably means “What?! Where?!”, but they might not actually say this to you over the phone or remotely. You would only know this if you were in person. If you are in person, you might have a hard time describing this reaction (or reactions) to others who might need to help you fix the problems. This is a great help to larger companies with large, distributed product teams. We’ve also had success with smaller teams. There are folks out there who charge tens of thousands for what we are developing, but you “own” the solution after you’ve bought it. We will charge tens or hundreds to “rent” you the lab on-demand.

        Our software will record from 1 to N videos as well as audio, all synchronized. You take periodic ‘observations” or “notes” and these become timestamped nodes on a mindmap that allow you to navigate directly to the portion of the videos/audio of interest.

        I’d love to talk to you more about it if you are interested. I can be reached at mark dot travis at foresailtech dot com.

      2. dnbrv Avatar
        dnbrv

        Mark, that’s rather interesting. I’ve always believed that a user’s frustration can be inferred from the task completion times although I understand the additional value of recording and analyzing the body language.

        Thank you for the offer to chat in more detail but I don’t believe I’m in your target market just yet as I do not practice UX analysis to such a deep extent. However, I’ve noted your company for future reference.

      3. Allan Bonadio Avatar
        Allan Bonadio

        Most of us encounter roadblocks all the time, using software. We puzzle over them, then find a workaround, later forgetting it all. (I try to notice myself doing these but that’s just me.) Nobody complains about them because they worked around quickly and don’t want to complain too much – it’s work to complain, and socially, you look pickey when you complain about relatively minor glitches. Smoothing out these glitches just makes the software more streamlined; subtle but it scores.

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