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.

Testing online

For online testing, the main things to cover are:

• Piloting our test to shake out mistakes in the tree and the task wording

• Providing a contact for participants who encounter problems

• Alerting our support channels that we’re doing a study, in case participants call to check that it’s legitimate.

For more on handling problems during a test, see 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 our plan