Moderating Usability Tests

124 CHAPTER 9 Moderator–participant arrangements

■ advantages and disadvantages of the arrangements.

■ situations that dictate which arrangement to use.

■ considerations for the practitioner.

9.1 A BIT OF HISTORY

Most of the books that describe testing from a didactic perspective

don’t help practitioners understand whether they should sit with the

test participant or in a separate room. Dumas and Redish (1999)

assume that the moderator and participant are normally separated:

“In most tests in which there are separate observation and test rooms,

the participant works alone in the test room” (p. 295). Because one

of the authors of that book (JD) ...