Tablet remote usability testing at Mozilla

We wanted to do some usability testing on an iPad app.  A simple task for any user experience researcher.  But one of the front-end engineers works out of his home in England, the lead designer works from our Toronto office, the product manager works out of her home in Canada, the other front-end engineer and tech lead work from our San Francisco office and I float between our San Francisco and Mountain View offices.  And our participants, who were Mozillia employees, were from anywhere and everywhere. :)

Our challenge was to conduct usability tests and broadcast them in real time to our teammates in 3+ locations as well as record the session for later data analysis.  Here’s what we did:

1. Turned on our video conferencing client, Vidyo, and all signed into the same room on my laptop.
2. Had the participant hug my laptop – from the back – while holding their iPad so my built in webcam would capture the iPad.  (A trick I learned from Jenn Downs, a user researcher at MailChimp.)
3. Set up a Flip camera on a stand to record the laptop screen for later use.
4. Taped a phone to the top of the laptop and used it as a camera when the participant and the researcher were in different locations.

At first I was afraid the video quality wouldn’t be good enough, but it everyone worked out really well.  So here’s how we do tablet remote usability testing at Mozilla.  We’d love to learn more of your tricks.