I’m in Austin, Texas attending the UPA (Usability Professionals Association) conference. Last night there was a “Birds of a Feather” group for folks interested in remote usability testing. The discussion was moderator by Aaron Marcus and about 30-40 people showed up. It was great to hear how excited and passionate this small group was about these fairly bleeding-edge methodologies, both qualitative and quantitative.
A recurring theme at UPA has been combining qualitative and quantitative methods for more effective analysis. Catriona Campbell from Foviance is giving a talk dedicated to the topic. We’ve seen a lot of interest from clients lately in running these kinds of studies. We’ve conducted a bunch of these combined studies recently and seen exciting results that have helped us understand users better than if we used one method in isolation.