Silverback & Guerrilla Usability Testing
 Silverback - Guerrilla Usability Testing Right on the heels of the release of Silverback to the public, comes a poignant article from Jakob Nielsen regarding rapid fire usability testing. To be honest, this is the first Nielsen article that I’ve actually read all the way through. And it’s because of Silverback. Usually, I read the summary at the top of the article, delete and immediately forget. But Silverback may just be the Holy Grail enabling this sort of usability testing. The tool itself is not impressive. The interface is amazingly sparse. The functionality consists of thee things: First: It groups usability sessions into projects. Organization is good. Second: It sets a video of the user inside the video of the screen capture – thus greatly reducing the hardware requirements for usability testing (assuming you already own an iSight equipped MacBook). Also good. Third: It adds small circles that emanate from the position of user clicks. (These only appear on the video afterwards, not during the session.) Useful for determining when the user actually clicks instead of just mousing over. Good, thank you. So what would make me pay $50 to buy this app? The attribute that may make this tool successful as a product and as an industry altering meme is that it targets the designer/developer as usability researcher. These are the people that directly control the functionality and design of the site and therefore have the greatest influence over it’s success. As a designer, I want my work to resonate with the people that use it – this tool can help me do that. That is, if a I can bring myself to get out of the cube and into the people space. Silverback’s failing is that it doesn’t come with a plugin to upgrade my personality from ‘hopeless recluse’ to ‘dynamic extrovert’. The hard work still sits squarely on my shoulders to motivate myself to do better, to be great. So I’m interested in this little app. I will spin it’s wheels. I will try it out on our redesigned site. But most of all, I’ll work a little harder at reaching out to my users and applying my craft to meet their needs. |
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Bringing usability testing to the masses is the right goal. To predict how successful Silverback will be, you need to determine why “the masses” aren’t currently doing usability testing. If it’s because there hasn’t been a cheap and easy recording solution, then Silverback will do great. On the other hand (hint: I have a bias here, that will soon be revealed), if you think it’s the hassle of finding and recruiting “fresh” users, setting-up an appointment with them, and moderating the test, then you might want to check out http://www.UserTesting.com (where I work). We’ve built a network of pre-screened user testers who can “think out loud” and stay on task without a moderator. So you just post a request for users (who match your target demographic) to do a series of tasks on your site, and in an hour or so you’re watching screencasts of them browsing your site and speaking their thoughts. It currently cost $19 per tester.
Finding fresh users is not an issue for me. I work inside of the library where the people that use the site also come in person everyday.
By the way, your comment reeks of spam but because it is on topic I’m allowing…for now