[IxDA Discuss] Hack your own usability studio (long recipe, low price)

[Alexander Baxevanis]

Hi Fredrik,
that's a great idea, and I can confirm that it works, as I've also tried it.
My need was to record the screen of a mobile phone. The solution was to
install a VNC server in the phone (yes, such a thing exists, see for example
this one for Symbian mobiles: http://www.m-shell.net/Products-mVNCFull.aspx)
and record the screen of a laptop that was running a VNC viewer and a webcam
viewer. Worked great (apart from a few problems with Audio/Video sync) and
it's the least intrusive way of recording a mobile screen that I've seen so
far.

Cheers,

Alex

On 9/26/07, Fredrik Matheson <fredrik.matheson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> At work we use Morae (http://techsmith.com/morae.asp) for user
> testing. Quirks aside, it works pretty well.
>
> The other day all our copies of Morae were busy and I needed a way to
> let colleagues observe the use of a website in the room next door.
> Basic requirements were:
>
> 1. a computer that the user would browse from (PC or Mac, it didn't
> matter)
> 2. some way to show what was on the user's screen on another computer
> 3. video of the user (one or more)
> 4.  audio of what the user was doing
> 5. hopefully, a way to record all of this
>
> Morae has lots of nice touches like keylogging, a yellow circle around
> the mouse (to aid visibility) and click hinting. It also has a way to
> mark events with keys on the observer's computer ("X" for problem, "L"
> for login, or whatever you prefer). They're valuable features but you
> can manage without them.
>
> 1: Since we had a few iSight cameras for the Mac, it made sense to use
> it for observation and use the spare PC we had as the user's machine.
> Therefore, the procedure for the observer machine below is a Mac.
>
> 2: VNC, or Virtual Network Computing, lets you access another
> computer's screen from your own. That was the easiest way to see what
> the user was doing. VNC uses a server on the host computer, and a
> viewer, on your computer.
> More information about VNC: http://www.cae.wisc.edu/site
> /public/?title=fswhatvnc
>
> The test subject was on a PC laptop and the observer machine was a Mac.
> On the PC, I used TightVNC (http://www.tightvnc.com/) as a server.
> On the Mac, I used JollysFastVNC  as a client
> (http://www.jinx.de/JollysFastVNC.html).
>
> We had to open a few ports in the PC's software firewall. VNC uses
> ports 5900–5909 (network experts: feel free to correct me) and made
> sure that the TightVNC server updated the entire screen often (300
> milliseconds) so that there wouldn't be a lot of lag. Then we found
> the IP address of the PC, typed it into JollysFastVNC and voilà, we
> had our user's screen.
>
> 3. An iSight camera on a magnetic mount was placed on a camera tripod
> and aimed at the user. We linked the standard firewire cable from the
> iSight to a firewire hub with a separate power supply and a five meter
> long cable. This let us watch the user from a separate room.
>
> For software, you can use iChat or Quicktime, but I wanted a smaller
> viewer. EvoCam (http://www.evological.com/evocam.html) gives you lots
> of control of the image from the iSight. If you have a MacBook (Pro)
> with an integrated iSight camera, EvoCam will let you easily select
> which iSight to get the signal from, and if you want to use multiple
> cameras, it'll let you do that as well.
>
> OK, so now a user could test, we could watch what happened on-screen
> and we could see the user working. What about sound?
>
> 4. Since iSight cameras have microphones we had sound in. But we had
> to get it out. LineIn (http://www.rogueamoeba.com/freebies/) from
> Rogue Amoeba lets you pass the sound through directly to the speakers.
> The MacBook Pro's speakers were good enough.
>
> 5. In the end we didn't record all of the sessions but ScreenMimic
> (http://www.polarian.com/) did a great job of recording the MacBook
> Pro screen, which showed the tester's screen and environment.
>
> So: computers, cameras, tripods and long cables aside, the whole
> "usability lab" cost about 100 USD. I'd love to hear what setups
> you've used to the same effect. Guerilla user testing stories are
> welcome.
>
> - Fredrik
>
> PS: You could, of course, re-distribute the observer computer screen
> using VNC (Vine VNCserver worked pretty well –
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/osxvnc/) but I don't know how you'd
> distribute the audio. Tips are welcome.
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