I have been playing with Silverback, its a mac app that allows you to conduct simple website usability tests without the cost of using a dedicated company or expensive software.

The way you use it is to sit a few people down in front of your macbook having loaded the silverback app in the background and set them off using a site you want to test. It records a screen capture video of all their browsing session and also quietly records their face as they use the site using the mac’s in built iSight camera.

I have run this on a couple of sites in development now and its been great, some of the insights you get into how the user is interacting with the site have meant we made changes before launch that we wouldnt have done without it.

I really think it makes for a better user experience when the final site is launched and as we all know testing is vital in web development.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 1st, 2008 at 1:43 pm and is filed under Website Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.