Moderating Usability Tests

46 CHAPTER 4 Golden rules 6 through 10

■ Maintain a neutral posture; don’t lean toward or away from the

participant.

■ Maintain fairly neutral facial expressions.

■ Learn to sit still. If you fi dget while participants are working, they

might think you’re bored or that they are doing something

wrong.

■ Give the same nonverbal feedback (e.g., a nod of the head) for

both positive and negative comments about the product.

If you take notes, take a lot of notes. If you don’t, participants may

be self-conscious when they hear you write something down. If they

don’t hear you write anything, they may think the feedback they gave

was not important. Worse, ...