Would you give up 10 minutes of your time for a free beer? 18 September, 2005
When I first read about Gotomedia’s café testing I thought it sounded like a simple, fun guerilla method: get a sign to attract participants and a low-fidelity prototype; sit in a café or other public location and run evaluations with the people that approach you. Now I’ve had a chance to use it I can tell you it’s even better than that.
- Setup is minimal. There’s no recruitment phase – you screen in the café and it took less than 5 minutes to prepare the signs to stand on a table and to locate a suitable wireframe from our developments.
- Customers are happy to participate. Everyone that came into the canteen commented on the ‘free beer’ sign and at one point I had people queueing to take part.
- It’s cheap. I was paying £5 per participant (approximately 2 beers).
- It’s quick. The simple protocol and informal setting means you spend less time putting participants at ease and more time running evaluations – I managed 5 people in 2 hours.
And once you’ve finished, you’re in the right place to celebrate with a free beer of your own.
August 7th, 2008 at 6:45 am
[...] A few years ago I read an article that changed the way I do usability testing. In the June 2004 Gotoreport Erik Burns introduced café usability testing: recruiting and running usability tests with participants in local cafés. This was a revelation to me. Even though I was using ‘discount’ methods and didn’t maintain a formal lab, Erik’s method of selecting participants in situ offered the opportunity to streamline the whole recruitment process. I could evaluate designs more quickly and economically, and pass the savings on to colleagues and clients. I ran my first café usability session in 2005 and I’ve been hooked ever since. [...]