Testing online with commercial tools

Most tree testing is now done online, so the “where” is really the participant’s PC or tablet or phone, wherever it may be. While their device is out of our control, we can check some things up front:

• Do we know of any firewalls or network restrictions that will hamper certain participant groups in our audience?
  This is most common when targeting users in a large organization.

• Are our participants running a compatible browser?
  Again, this is mostly a problem with large organizations who may be locked into older browser versions, or with users who have older mobile devices.

For more on dealing with this, see Checking for technical problems in Chapter 10.

Testing in person

If we’re testing on paper, or doing an online test face-to-face with a participant (see Asking “why?” with in-person sessions in Chaper 11 for reasons why we would want to do this), then the “where” becomes important.

While a full discussion of how to host participants is beyond the scope of this guide, we offer a few tips in Chapter 9's Recruiting for in-person sessions.

Next: Who will do what?