[IxDA Discuss] Usability testing software for Mac?

[Josephine Choi]

Hi Jay,

Sorry for the late response, but I hope better late than never.

I have had a few responses on and off-list, let me see if I can capture them.

Visual Mark - I got this response a few times.  I checked it out and
the software looks great, but I couldn't get it hooked up in time as
it required Mac to record the session and another computer.  I only
had 1 Mac, and was conducting testing on it.

Ovo - Seemed promising as well, but I couldn't get the set up nor
funding in time for the test.  I signed up for a free trial for Ovo
Logger, but I didn't see any help on using it on a Mac, so I made a
quick decision to put it on the back burner.  Still, it comes highly
recommended by someone who has set it up and conducted several
successful Mac studies on it.

Vine viewer - remote desktop viewer.  I tried setting this up, but
there was considerable lag between what I was seeing on my Windows
machine and what was happening on the Mac.  In addition, the cursor
wasn't visible.

Apple Remote Desktop - another remote desktop viewer, but I must
admit, I didn't try this.

Redstone Eggplant - another one that I didn't investigate too deeply
due to time.

SnapZPro - for screen capture - it had by far the best fidelity - no
lag and it caught all mouse clicks.  You could also record audio.
Unfortunately, it took forever for me to save/encode the file (on the
order of hours!) so it wasn't feasible for me to use.

There are also other screen capture tools for the Mac that I tried.
They saved/encoded faster than SnapZPro, but still on the order of
almost an hour.  They lagged and the video quality was quite poor,
skipping over mouse clicks, etc.

So after all this investigation and desperately trying to get Snapzpro
to encode faster, I hacked a user study set-up (another suggestion):

I set up WebEx conferences and had a Windows machine with Morae and
the Mac testing computer in the same conference.  I shared the Mac
desktop (make sure it's the host), and thus I was able to record the
Mac desktop off the Windows machine using Morae.  In addition I was
able to use Morae's video and audio capturing.

There was a bit of lag, but I could still see the cursor moving and
most mouse clicks.  It kept up pretty well with real time.  The main
problem I encountered was with network connectivity - my windows
machine got disconnected from the conference or couldn't sign on.
Still, it was a good fix for my needs.

Hope this helps!  Feel free to email me if you have any other questions.

- Josephine






On 2/6/07, Jay Zipursky <jay.zipursky at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Josephine,
>
> Has anyone replied off-list?  The only "product" I know of is something
> called VisualMark by UsersFirst (http://www.usersfirst.com/).  It's "beta",
> but I'm not sure it's under active development anymore.  Maybe the author
> reads this list and can chime in...
>
> Anyway, it's definitely not a competitor to Morae and is quite rough from
> what I've seen.  I've never used it for a test.
>
> You may want to try rigging up something like a VNC connection to the test
> computer and use Morae to record the screen remotely. (I believe this is how
> VisualMark works, actually.)  This is not the best solution, but it may be
> better than nothing.
>
> Let me know what you end up doing.
>
> Jay
> Kodak
>
>
> On 1/31/07, Josephine Choi <josephine.c.choi at gmail.com > wrote:
> >
> > Hi everyone,
> >
> > My company's working on a new Mac product that we will be doing usability
> > testing on.  We use Morae for our Windows products and like the features
> it
> > provides.
> >
> > We're looking to find something comparable for testing Mac software.  We
> are
> > doing testing on-site, so remote testing software is not necessary.
> > However, we would like reliable screen capture.  Remote observer
> capability
> > and real-time marking/flagging would also be nice to haves.  For those who
> > have experience with testing Mac software, would you be able to share your
> > experiences and process?  What products do you use?
> >
> > Thanks for your input,
> > Josephine
> >
> > PS - Also posted on the sig-ia disc group, sorry if you receive this
> twice!
> >
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