Beyond the Usability Lab

Chapter 8. Discount Approaches to Building an Online Study

This chapter is for “do-it-yourselfers” who want to try to build their own online studies using discount or even free methods. If you would rather let other people worry about the mechanics of the study, then go back to Chapter 7, which describes some of the commercial tools available. But if you're willing to get your hands a little bit dirty and want to try at least some basic online usability testing techniques, read on.

The approach we're going to take is to start simple and work up from there. Data you can get from the simpler approaches will be limited but still potentially very useful. Adding more features, such as task timing, will broaden the data that can be collected. Eventually ...