In person experiments

You can get the feedback, see the errors by yourself and overall have better engagement with your participant.

Before study lay out the scope and clear goals what do you want to know about your design. - It´s ok to have narrow scope, you dont need to test the large design at once.

Think about the testing environment - if this would be used in a crowded place, test it there; if it would be used in a quiet place, you need to test there.

How many people?

Come up with scenarios that users could really relate to.

Come up with concrete tasks.

Its necessary that you give the same tasks and the same input to all participants - this gives you the comparison moment.

You are testing the site not the user!

Experimental details

• Order of the tasks
• Training before the test (depends on whether the real users afterwards will get any training or not)
• What will you do when the user does not finish a task.
• Pilot the study - try it out before you are going to use it on the real participants.

Think out aloud method

Ask users to talk while performing tasks

• tell us what they are thinking
• tell us what they are trying to do
• tell us questions that arise as they work
• tell us things they read

Promt participants during the session to continue thinking aloud. They can easily forget it because it is not natural for them.