Moderated vs unmoderated research: which approach is best?

Knowing and understanding why and how your users use your product can be invaluable for getting to the nitty gritty of usability. Where they get stuck and where they fly through. Delving deep with probing questions into motivation or skimming over looking for issues can equally be informative.

‍

Usability testing can be done in several ways, each way has its benefits. Put super simply, usability testing literally is testing how useable your product is for your users. If your product isn't useable users will not stick around or very often complete their task, let alone come back for more.

‍

‍

What is usability testing?

‍

Usability testing is a research method used to evaluate how easy something is to use by testing it with representative users.

‍

These tests typically involve observing a participant as they work through a series of tasks involving the product being tested. Having conducted several usability tests, you can analyze your observations to identify the most common issues.

‍

We go into the three main methods of usability testing:

1. Moderated and unmoderated
2. Remote or in person
3. Explorative, assessment or comparative

‍

‍

1. Moderated or unmoderated usability testing

‍

Moderated usability testing

Moderated usability testing is done in-person or remotely by a researcher who introduces the test to participants, answers their queries, and asks follow-up questions. Often these tests are done in real time with participants and can involve other research stakeholders. Moderated testing usually produces more in-depth results thanks to the direct interaction between researchers and test participants. However, this can be expensive to organize and run.

‍

Top tip: Use moderated testing to investigate the reasoning behind user behavior.

‍

Unmoderated usability testing

‍
Unmoderated usability testing is done without direct supervision; likely participants are in their own homes and/or using their own devices to browse the website that is being tested. And often at their own pace.  The cost of unmoderated testing is lower, though participant answers can remain superficial and making follow-up questions can be difficult.

‍

Top tip: Use unmoderated testing to test a very specific question or observe and measure behavior patterns.

‍

‍

2. Research or in-person usability testing

‍

Remote usability testing

‍
‍Remote usability testing is done over the internet or by phone. Allowing the participants to have the time and space to work in their own environment and at their own pace. This however doesn’t give the researcher much in the way of contextual data because you’re unable to ask questions around intention or probe deeper if the participant makes a particular decision. Remote testing doesn’t go as deep into a participant’s reasoning, but it allows you to test large numbers of people in different geographical areas using fewer resources.

‍

Top tip: Use remote testing when a large group of participants are needed and the questions asked can be direct and unambiguous.

‍

In-person usability testing

‍
‍In-person usability testing, as the name suggests, is done in the presence of a researcher. In-person testing does provide contextual data as researchers can observe and analyze body language and facial expressions. You’re also often able to converse with participants and find out more about why they do something. However, in-person testing can be expensive and time-consuming: you have to find a suitable space, block out a specific date, and recruit (and often pay) participants.

‍

Top tip: In-person testing gives researchers more time and insight into motivation for decisions.

‍

‍

3. Explorative, Assessment or comparative testing

‍

These three usability testing methods generate different types of information:

‍

Explorative testing

‍
‍Explorative testing is open-ended. Participants are asked to brainstorm, give opinions, and express emotional impressions about ideas and concepts. The information is typically collected in the early stages of product development and helps researchers pinpoint gaps in the market, identify potential new features, and workshop new ideas.

‍

Assessment research

‍
‍Assessment research is used to test a user's satisfaction with a product and how well they are able to use it. It's used to evaluate general functionality.

‍

Comparative research

‍
‍Comparative research methods involve asking users to choose which of two solutions they prefer, and they may be used to compare a product with its competitors.

‍

Top tip: Depending on what research is being done, and how much qualitative or quantitative data is wanted.

‍

‍

Which method is right for you?

‍

Whether the testing is done in-person, remote, moderated or unmoderated will depend on your purpose, what you want out of the testing, and to some extent your budget. 

‍

Depending on what you are testing, each of the usability testing methods we explored here can offer an answer. If you are at the development stage of a product it can be useful to conduct a usability test on the entire product. Checking the intuitive usability of your website, to ensure users can make the best decisions, quickly. Or adding, changing or upgrading a product can also be the moment to check on a specific question around usability. Planning and understanding your objectives are key to selecting the right usability testing option for your project.

‍

Let's take a look at a couple of examples of usability testing.

‍

‍

1. Lab based, in-person moderated testing - mid-life website

‍

Imagine you have a website that sells sports equipment. Over time your site has become cluttered and disorganized, much like a bricks and mortar store may. You’ve noticed a drop in sales in certain areas. How do you find out what is going wrong or where users are getting lost? Having an in-person, lab (or other controlled environment), moderated usability test with users you can set tasks, watch (and record) what they do.

‍

The researcher can literally be standing or sitting next to the participant throughout, recording contextual information such as how they interacted with the mouse, laptop or even the seat. Watching for cues as to the comfort of the participant and asking questions about why they make decisions can provide richer insights. Maybe they wanted purple yoga pants, but couldn’t find the ‘yoga’ section which was listed under gym rather than a clothing section.

‍

Meaning you can look at how your stock is organised, or even investigate undertaking a card sort. This provides robust and fully rounded feedback on users behaviours, expectations and experiences. Providing data that can directly be turned into actionable directives when redeveloping the website. 

‍

‍

2. Remote, moderated assessment testing - app product development

‍

You are looking at launching an app for parents to access for information and updates for the school. It’s still in development stage and at this point you want to know how easy the app is to use. Setting some very specific set tasks for participants to complete the app can be sent to them and they can be left to complete (or not). Providing feedback and comments around the usability.

‍

The next step may be to use first click testing to see how and where the interface is clicked and where participants may be spending time, or becoming lost. Whilst the feedback and data gathered from this testing can be light, it will be very direct to the questions asked. And will provide data to back up (or possibly not) what assumptions were made.

‍

‍

3. Moderated, In-person, explorative testing - new product development

‍

You’re right at the start of the development process. The idea is new and fresh and the basics are being considered. What better way to get an understanding of what your users’ truly want than an explorative study.

‍

Open-ended questions with participants in a one-on-one environment (or possibly in groups) can provide rich data and insights for the development team. Imagine you have an exciting new promotional app that you are developing for a client. There are similar apps on the market but none as exciting as what your team has dreamt up. By putting it (and possibly the competitors) to participants they can give direct feedback on what they like, love and loathe.

‍

They can also help brainstorm ideas or better ways to make the app work, or improve the interface. All of this done, before there is money sunk in development.

‍

‍

Usability testing summary: When to use each method (and why)

‍

Key objectives will dictate which usability testing method will deliver the answers to your questions.

‍

Whether it’s in-person, remote, moderated or comparative with a bit of planning you can gather data around your users very real experience of your product. Identify issues, successes and failures. Addressing your user experience with real data, and knowledge can but lead to a more intuitive product.

It’s a chicken and egg situation when it comes to securing funding for a large transformation program in government. On one hand, you need to submit a business case and, as part of that, you need to make early decisions about how you might approach and deliver the program of work. On the other hand, you need to know enough about the problem you are going to solve to ensure you have sufficient funding to understand the problem better, hire the right people, design the right service, and build it the right way. 

‍

Now imagine securing hundreds of millions of dollars to design and build a service, but not feeling confident about what the user needs are. What if you had the opportunity to change this common predicament and influence your leadership team to carry out alignment activities, all while successfully delivering within the committed time frames?

‍

Meera Pankhania, Design Director and Co-founder of Propel Design, recently spoke at UX New Zealand, the leading UX and IA conference in New Zealand hosted by Optimal Workshop, on traceability and her learnings from delivering a $300 million Government program.

‍

In her talk, Meera helps us understand how to use service traceability techniques in our work and apply them to any environment - ensuring we design and build the best service possible, no matter the funding model.

‍

Background on Meera Pankhania

‍

As a design leader, Meera is all about working on complex, purpose-driven challenges. She helps organizations take a human-centric approach to service transformation and helps deliver impactful, pragmatic outcomes while building capability and leading teams through growth and change.

‍

Meera co-founded Propel Design, a strategic research, design, and delivery consultancy in late 2020. She has 15 years of experience in service design, inclusive design, and product management across the private, non-profit, and public sectors in both the UK and Australia. 

‍

Meera is particularly interested in policy and social design. After a stint in the Australian Public Service, Meera was appointed as a senior policy adviser to the NSW Minister for Customer Service, Hon. Victor Dominello MP. In this role, she played a part in NSW’s response to the COVID pandemic, flexing her design leadership skills in a new, challenging, and important context.

‍

Contact Details:

‍

Email address: meera@propeldesign.com.au

‍

Find Meera on LinkedIn  

‍

From funding to delivery: ensuring alignment from start to finish 🏁🎉👏

‍

Meera’s talk explores a fascinating case study within the Department of Employment Services (Australia) where a substantial funding investment of around $300 million set the stage for a transformative journey. This funding supported the delivery of a revamped Employment Services Model, which had the goal of delivering better services to job seekers and employers, and a better system for providers within this system. The project had a focus on aligning teams prior to delivery, which resulted in a huge amount of groundwork for Meera.

‍

Her journey involved engaging various stakeholders within the department, including executives, to understand the program as a whole and what exactly needed to be delivered. “Traceability” became the watchword for this project, which is laid out in three phases.

‍

• Phase 1: Aligning key deliverables
• Phase 2: Ensuring delivery readiness
• Phase 3: Building sustainable work practices

‍

Phase 1: Aligning key deliverables 🧮

‍

Research and discovery (pre-delivery)

‍

Meera’s work initially meant conducting extensive research and engagement with executives, product managers, researchers, designers, and policymakers. Through this process, a common theme was identified – the urgent (and perhaps misguided) need to start delivering! Often, organizations focus on obtaining funding without adequately understanding the complexities involved in delivering the right services to the right users, leading to half-baked delivery.

After this initial research, some general themes started to emerge:

1. Assumptions were made that still needed validation
2. Teams weren’t entirely sure that they understood the user’s needs
3. A lack of holistic understanding of how much research and design was needed

The conclusion of this phase was that “what” needed to be delivered wasn’t clearly defined. The same was true for “how” it would be delivered.

‍

Traceability

‍

Meera’s journey heavily revolved around the concept of "traceability” and sought to ensure that every step taken within the department was aligned with the ultimate goal of improving employment services. Traceability meant having a clear origin and development path for every decision and action taken. This is particularly important when spending taxpayer dollars!

‍

So, over the course of eight weeks (which turned out to be much longer), the team went through a process of combing through documents in an effort to bring everything together to make sense of the program as a whole. This involved some planning, user journey mapping, and testing and refinement. 

‍

Documenting Key Artifacts

‍

Numerous artifacts and documents played a crucial role in shaping decisions. Meera and her team gathered and organized these artifacts, including policy requirements, legislation, business cases, product and program roadmaps, service maps, and blueprints. The team also included prior research insights and vision documents which helped to shape a holistic view of the required output.

‍

After an effort of combing through the program documents and laying everything out, it became clear that there were a lot of gaps and a LOT to do.

‍

Prioritising tasks

‍

As a result of these gaps, a process of task prioritization was necessary. Tasks were categorized based on a series of factors and then mapped out based on things like user touch points, pain points, features, business policy, and technical capabilities.

‍

This then enabled Meera and the team to create Product Summary Tiles. These tiles meant that each product team had its own summary ahead of a series of planning sessions. It gave them as much context (provided by the traceability exercise) as possible to help with planning. Essentially, these tiles provided teams with a comprehensive overview of their projects i.e. what their user needs, what certain policies require them to deliver, etc.  

‍

Phase 2: Ensuring delivery readiness 🙌🏻

‍

Meera wanted every team to feel confident that we weren’t doing too much or too little in order to design and build the right service, the right way.

‍

Standard design and research check-ins were well adopted, which was a great start, but Meera and the team also built a Delivery Readiness Tool. It was used to assess a team's readiness to move forward with a project. This tool includes questions related to the development phase, user research, alignment with the business case, consideration of policy requirements, and more. Ultimately, it ensures that teams have considered all necessary factors before progressing further. 

‍

Phase 3: Building sustainable work practices 🍃

‍

As the program progressed, several sustainable work practices emerged which Government executives were keen to retain going forward.

Some of these included:

‍

• ResearchOps Practice: The team established a research operations practice, streamlining research efforts and ensuring that ongoing research was conducted efficiently and effectively.
• Consistent Design Artifacts: Templates and consistent design artifacts were created, reducing friction and ensuring that teams going forward started from a common baseline.
• Design Authority and Ways of Working: A design authority was established to elevate and share best practices across the program.
• Centralized and Decentralized Team Models: The program showcased the effectiveness of a combination of centralized and decentralized team models. A central design team provided guidance and support, while service design leads within specific service lines ensured alignment and consistency.

‍

Why it matters 🔥

‍

Meera's journey serves as a valuable resource for those working on complex design programs, emphasizing the significance of aligning diverse stakeholders and maintaining traceability. Alignment and traceability are critical to ensuring that programs never lose sight of the problem they’re trying to solve, both from the user and organization’s perspective. They’re also critical to delivering on time and within budget!

‍

Traceability key takeaways 🥡

‍

• Early Alignment Matters: While early alignment is ideal, it's never too late to embark on a traceability journey. It can uncover gaps, increase confidence in decision-making, and ensure that the right services are delivered.
• Identify and audit: You never know what artifacts will shape your journey. Identify everything early, and don’t be afraid to get clarity on things you’re not sure about.
• Conducting traceability is always worthwhile: Even if you don’t find many gaps in your program, you will at least gain a high level of confidence that your delivery is focused on the right things.

‍

Delivery readiness key takeaways 🥡

‍

• Skills Mix is Vital: Assess and adapt team member roles to match their skills and experiences, ensuring they are positioned optimally.
• Not Everyone Shares the Same Passion: Recognize that not everyone will share the same level of passion for design and research. Make the relevance of these practices clear to all team members.

‍

Sustainability key takeaways 🥡

‍

• One Size Doesn't Fit All: Tailor methodologies, templates, and practices to the specific needs of your organization.
• Collaboration is Key: Foster a sense of community and collective responsibility within teams, encouraging shared ownership of project outcomes.

‍

‍

If there’s one universal truth in user research, it’s that at some point you’re going to need to find people to actually take part in your studies. Be it a large number of participants for quantitative research or a select number for in-depth, in-person user interviews. Finding the right people (and number) of people can be a hurdle.

‍

With the right strategy, you can source exactly the right participants for your next research project.

‍

We share a practical step-by-step guide on how to find participants for user experience research.

‍

The difficulties/challenges of user research recruiting 🏋️

‍

It has to be acknowledged that there are challenges when recruiting research participants. You may recognize some of these:

‍

• There are so many channels and methods you can use to find participants, different channels will work better for different projects.
• Repeatedly using the same channels and methods will result in diminishing returns (i.e. burning out participants).
• It’s a lengthy and complex process, and some projects don’t have the luxury of time.
• Offering the right incentives and distributing them is time-consuming.
• It’s hard to manage participants during long-term or recurring studies, such as customer research projects.

‍

We’ll simplify the process, talk about who the right participants are, and unpack some of the best ways to find them. Removing these blocks can be the easiest way to move forward.

‍

Who are the right participants for different types of research? 🤔

‍

1. The first step to a successful participant recruitment strategy is clarifying the goals of your user research and which methods you intend to use. Ask yourself:

• What is the purpose of our research?
• How do we plan to understand that?

‍

2. Define who your ideal research participant is. Who is going to have the answers to your questions?

‍

3. Work out your research recruitment strategy. That starts by understanding the differences between recruiting for qualitative and quantitative research.

‍

Recruiting for qualitative vs. quantitative research 🙋🏻

‍

Quantitative research recruiting is a numbers game. For your data analysis to be meaningful and statistically significant, you need a lot of data. This means you need to do a lot of research with a lot of people. When recruiting for quantitative research, you first have to define the population (the entire group you want to study). From there, you choose a sampling method that allows you to create a sample—a randomly selected subset of the population who will participate in your study.

‍

Qualitative recruiting involves far fewer participants, but you do need to find a selection of ‘perfect’ participants. Those that fit neatly into your specific demographic, geographic, psychographic, and behavioral criteria relevant to your study. Recruiting quality participants for qualitative studies involves non-random sampling, screening, and plenty of communication.

‍

How many participants do you need? 👱🏻👩👩🏻👧🏽👧🏾

‍

How many participants to include in a qualitative research study is one of the most heavily discussed topics in user research circles. In most cases, you can get away with 5 people – that’s the short answer. With 5 people, you’ll uncover most of the main issues with the thing you’re testing. Depending on your research project there could be as many as 50 participants, but with each additional person, there is an additional cost (money and time).

‍

Quantitative research is obviously quite different. With studies like card sorts and tree tests, you need higher participant numbers to get statistically meaningful results. Anywhere from 20 - 500 participants, again coming back to the purpose of your test and your research budget. These are usually easier and quicker to implement therefore the additional cost is lower.

‍

User research recruitment - step by step 👟

‍

Let’s get into your research recruitment strategy to find the best participants for your research project. There are 5 clear steps to get you through to the research stage:

‍

1. Identify your ideal participants

‍

Who are they? What do they do? How old are they? Do they already use your product? Where do they live? These are all great questions to get you thinking about who exactly you need to answer your research questions. The demographic and geographic detail of your participants are important to the quality of your research results.

‍

2. Screen participants

‍

Screening participants will weed out those that may not be suitable for your specific project. This can be as simple as asking if the participants have used a product similar to yours. Or coming back to your key identified demographic requirements and removing anyone that doesn’t fit these criteria.

‍

3. Find prospective participants

‍

This is important and can be time-consuming. For qualitative research projects, you can look within your organization or ask over social media for willing participants. Or if you’re short on time look at a participant recruitment service, which takes your requirements and has a catalog of available persons to call on. There’s a cost involved, but the time saving can negate this. For qualitative surveys, a great option can be a live intercept on your website or app that interrupts users and asks them to complete a short questionnaire.

‍

4. Research incentives

‍

In some cases you will need to provide incentives. This could be offering a prize or discount for those who complete online qualitative surveys. Or a fixed sum for those that take part in longer format quantitative studies.

‍

5. Scheduling with participants

‍

Once you have waded through the emails, options, and communication from your inquiries make a list of appropriate participants. Schedule time to do the research, either in person or remotely. Be clear about expectations and how long it will take. And what the incentive to take part is.

‍

Tips to avoid participant burnout 📛

‍

You’ve got your participants sorted and have a great pool of people to call on. If you keep hitting the same group of people time and time again, you will experience the law of diminishing returns. Constantly returning to the same pool of participants will eventually lead to fatigue. And this will impact the quality of your research because it’s based on interviewing the same people with the same views.

‍

There are 2 ways to avoid this problem:

‍

1. Use a huge database of potential participant targets.
2. Use a mixture of different recruitment strategies and channels.

‍

Of course, it might be unavoidable to hit the same audience repeatedly when you’re testing your product development among your customer base.

‍

Wrap up 🌯

‍

Understanding your UX research recruitment strategy is crucial to recruiting quality participants. A clear idea of your purpose, who your ideal participants are, and how to find them takes time and experience. 

‍

And to make life easier you can always leave your participant recruitment with us. With a huge catalog of quality participants all at your fingertips on our app, we can recruit the right people quickly.

‍

Check out more here.