...

Anyone who has done user research is familiar with Murphy's Law  – the participant doesn’t show up on time, the test equipment fails (it was working this morning!) – and the list goes on.For in-person sessions, the main challenge is getting the right participant in the right room at the right time. Mostly that’s a matter of good recruiting, though life does happen – traffic is heavy, kids get sick, etc.

Testing online

For online testing, the main things to cover are:

• Piloting your our test to shake out mistakes in the tree and the task wording
  
  
• Providing a contact for participants who encounter problems
  
  
• Alerting your our support channels that you’re we’re doing a study, in case participants call to check that it’s legitimate.
  
  

For more on handling problems during a test, see ~Chapter N, Other Setup Stuff. Checking for technical problems in Chapter 10 and Monitoring the test's progress in Chapter 11.

Testing in person

For tips on testing people in person, see Recruiting for in-person sessions.

...

Next: Documenting your our plan