Abstract
You are half way through a usability test session, and the participant s cell phone rings. She answers it and says it s her child calling and she has to leave immediately, but she ll be back in 45 minutes to finish the test What should you do? In the course of running hundreds of product evaluations, we have encountered some awkward and unusual situations. These situations involve issues with participants, with the software or product being tested, and with the test protocol. Among the factors that we consider when resolving these issues include the participant s rights and psychological well-being, the cost to replace the participant s test session, the importance of adhering strictly to the recruiting criteria, and how eliminating the test session might affect the integrity of the protocol or data. In this paper, we describe some real-life sticky testing situations and discuss the factors we considered in resolving each issue.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.