Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

by Krug Steve

They’re heavy and awkward. It weighs almost nothing and barely changes the way the phone feels in your hand. They’re distracting. It’s very small (smaller than it looks in the photo) and is positioned out of the participant’s line of sight, which is focused on the phone. Nobody wants to attach anything to their phone. Sleds are usually attached to phones with Velcro or double-sided tape. This uses a padded clamp that can’t scratch or mar anything but still grips the device firmly. One limitation of this kind of solution is that it is tethered: It requires a USB extension cable running from the camera to your laptop. But you can buy a long extension inexpensively. The rest of the setup is very straightforward: Connect the Brundlefly to the facilitator’s laptop via USB. Open something like AmCap (on a PC) or QuickTime Player (on a Mac) to display the view from the Brundlefly. The facilitator will watch this view. Share the laptop screen with the observers using screen sharing (GoToMeeting, WebEx, etc.) Run a screen recorder (e.g., Camtasia) on the computer in the observation room. This reduces the burden on the facilitator’s laptop.