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RE: JAWS and Techsmith Morae

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From: Judy Rice
Date: Aug 4, 2006 12:30PM

I too truly enjoy using Morae for the reasons Janna mentioned.

I do my summary reports in power points with links to clips illustrating the
points I'm making: the engineers/designers give more credence when they see the
video supporting my conclusions. My favorite is when I tested a feature I had
thought was too obscure, but got nowhere trying to warn the designers before the
tests. During a session one participant, an elderly gentleman, started shedding
tears saying how stupid he was and apologizing...After much comforting and
assuring him it was stupid designers' fault (had given him the standard
explanations ahead of time about testing design not him, etc. but he still felt
it his failure) he felt better realizing his experience would spare many others
a similar one. Needless to say, that clip with tears had a profound effect that
could not have been achieved with just my words.

I invite the designers and engineers to observe the sessions in the next room,
but many do not have the time. They will, however, review a ppt with highlight
clips (rare to have anyone review the full recording of the sessions).

I find Morae is invaluable for testing on the road. Only drawback is the time
to compile video for inclusion in reports, and to press it to DVD for
distribution.

Judy Rice
Human Factors Engineer

>>> "Janna Cameron" < <EMAIL REMOVED> > 8/4/2006 11:50 AM >>>


I've used Morae for a lot of usability testing.

Some things that I use it for:
1. It is like a portable usability lab. It allows people to watch and
hear my usability sessions from another room. The can see all screen
activity, hear voices and see the input from a web camera. I love being
able to give people a way to experience the sessions without making the
participant uncomfortable with their physical presence.

2. It records some things that I would likely miss. It creates a log
(associated with the screen recording) of all the keystrokes. This is
really useful when going back to understand some of the things people
tried to do - but weren't supported. For instance, in one application I
could see that people kept trying to find right-click menus.

3. It is great for creating highlight videos. I can search for event
and create video clips from the session. A great thing is that I can
choose to show only the screen or the web camera.

4. It acts as a data logger. A remote viewer can annotate and log the
video as they're watching. This saves a lot of time when reviewing
things.

5. When I do summative evaluations - I can easily extract the duration
of tasks. (I like showing people a box plot/ scatterplot of the task
completion times.)

I also use pen and paper - in order to mark up my expected task flows as
users try out the system.

Janna