Moderating Usability Tests

Interacting during the session

Chapter

6

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This chapter covers the issues that you will spend most of your time

dealing with during the 60 to 90 minutes when participants are

working on tasks. We focus on common situations that occur most

of the time, not unusual events that rarely occur. (See Loring & Patel,

2001, for a discussion of the uncommon situations.) An effective

moderator handles these typical events with no diffi culty.

This chapter contains a set of “good practice” guidelines for the

everyday situations:

■ How much to interact

■ Keeping them talking

■ Probing for more information

■ Providing encouragement

■ Dealing with failure

■ Providing ...