Remote Usability Testing

Researchers at Progress have conducted hundreds of usability tests, and spoken with thousands of people, across a broad range of products, contexts, and business domains. We perform both qualitative and quantitative usability studies and we are known for obtaining data that is not only actionable but authentic and “real-life.”

Usability testing is a critical UX research method where real users interact with a product or prototype to identify usability issues and gather qualitative and quantitative data on their experiences. During these sessions, participants are asked to complete specific tasks while observers watch, listen, and take notes. The primary goal is to understand how easily users can navigate and achieve their objectives, highlighting areas of confusion, frustration, and satisfaction. This direct feedback is invaluable for refining the design, enhancing user satisfaction, and ensuring the product meets user needs and expectations before its final release.

Remote usability tests are conducted via online screen share (using Zoom, Teams, or similar) with the study participants using the design and speaking with the moderator via webcam and microphone.

Benefits of testing Remotely

We’ve innovated on our remote usability testing methods over many years, finding this modality to offer many benefits:

• Participants often feel more comfortable as they’re speaking to us from their environment.

• We often learn a great deal about the participants’ environment during the sessions, as opposed to speaking with them in a lab environment where all of the surroundings are the same. This is often referred to as an “ethnographic bonus” of remote testing.

• As there is no need to travel, we can speak with people all over the world, often within one or two days. Similarly, the client teams can seamlessly observe sessions from their locations.

• Study moderators can communicate with the client teams during the sessions more easily, via Slack or similar, so that key questions can be answered in real-time, during the conversations.

Moderated vs. Unmoderated Remote Usability Testing

The great majority of remote usability testing at Progress UX is conducted with a moderator. While there is value in and a time and place for unmoderated testing, there is simply no substitute for live qualitative usability testing.

When a study participant says something unexpected, or there is a question to be answered based on what is occurring during the session, the moderator can explore further, at the moment it occurs, often leading to new insights that could not have been anticipated. We feel this is one of the primary values of usability testing - to not only gain the answers to questions we know to ask but to learn new insights that we could not have known before the sessions began.