5.5.3 Recording

There are plain and fancy approaches here. It is quite practical to record observations only by taking notes on a pad of paper: you write down in order what the user does and says, in summary form. But you'll find that it takes some experience to do this fast enough to keep up in real time, and that you won't be able to do it for the first few test users you see on a given system and task. This is just because you need a general idea of where things are going to be able to keep up. A step up in technology is to make a video record of what is happening on the screen, with a lapel mike on the user to pick up the comments. A further step is to instrument the system to pick up a trace of user actions, and arrange for this record to be synchronized in some way with an audio record of the comments. The advantage of this approach is that it gives you a machine readable record of user actions that can be easier to summarize and access than video.

A good approach to start with is to combine a video record with written notes. You may find that you are able to dispense with the video, or you may find that you really want a fancier record. You can adapt your approach accordingly. But if you don't have a video setup don't let that keep you from trying the method.