1. Moderate This!
Choosing Participants
Test Set-up
• Choose 5-7 participants who represent the demographics of your site’s actual
visitors/user/customers.
• Remember that any testing is better than not testing at all, but that
testing with internal participants comes with a bias.
• Avoid long sessions, that fatigue both the participant and moderator.
• Guide participants through tasks chosen from real-life scenarios.
• Remain patient with the user yet in control of the test.
Techniques
Prompting as a reminder:
So...?
What are you seeing here?
Reading Material*
Probing questions:
Tell me a little more about…
Describe a bit more about…
Task Failure:
Don’t commiserate
Don’t tell a white lie
1.
2.
3.
4.
Probing examples:
Is that what you expected, or not what you
expected?
If you were at home, what would you do next?
You just said, “[participant quote].” Help me
to understand what you mean by that.
Don’t make me Think
Rocket Surgery Made Easy
Handbook of Usability
Testing: How to Plan,
Design, and Conduct
Effective Tests
Moderating Usability
Tests: Principles and
Practices for Interacting
*The above are by no means the only
references available for moderating
usability tests. If you are questioning what
to do next, these four are a good place to
start.