 Welcome to remote versus in-person usability testing. Usability testing evaluates a website or an application by testing it with representative users. It helps us understand what users do, why they do it, identify any usability problems, and determine their overall satisfaction with the product. As a usability designer, you already understand how important it is to test early and often. Using a variety of testing styles and tools during project development ensures it meets or exceeds your users' needs and wants. Today, we'll focus on in-person and remote testing by examining the advantages and disadvantages of each. While there are many different methods of usability testing, they all fall into one of two groups, in-person or remote. Anytime you have a user physically present, it's considered in-person testing. Remote testing includes any tests that take place without a usability designer present. In-person testing is recommended because your moderator can observe and record user's body language, gestures, and non-verbal cues. Methods of in-person testing include contextual interviews, eye-tracking, and focus groups. Remote testing is ideal when it's hard to find the right test users, your budget is relatively small, or when you quickly need to know the results. Your remote tests can be either moderated or unmoderated. Advantages and disadvantages. While in-person testing requires more creative logistics than remote testing, it also provides the more accurate and in-depth feedback. Methods include card sort, prototypes, and focus groups. In addition to measuring basics, like where the user is clicking, in-person testing allows the moderator to take note of physical, verbal, and emotional responses, which are challenging to access remotely. During each of these tests, the designer can interact with the users and ask probing questions based on the results. Some of the challenges with in-person testing are time, cost, and logistics. It can take longer to set up and run in-person sessions, so your testing timeline needs to line up with the user's availability. Inviting users on site for in-person testing can be costly. Compensation may be required for the testing expenses, as well as for the designer's cost to arrange, test, and compile the results. Another challenge is logistics. If your participants are scattered across the country, it may be difficult to arrange travel to every location. Remote testing is a more flexible and cost-effective alternative to in-person testing. The tools include moderated and unmoderated tests. During a moderated remote test, the participants are observed while they complete the tasks. In an unmoderated test, the participants complete the test without any moderator interaction. Some remote tools allow interaction with the user, much like during in-person testing. The remote testing options track eye movement, record users' clicks when they navigate a website or mobile application, and record a user's voice. Some tools even track the cursor's path and the time it remains stationary. The disadvantage to remote testing is detecting user nuances. Capturing body language and emotions can be difficult, if not impossible, during remote testing. Nothing completely replaces seeing a user complete a task or navigate a poorly designed website. As a user-experienced designer, you don't have to choose between in-person and remote testing. You can use a combination of tests to get the necessary feedback and save costs. Take time to research available methods and find the ones that fit with your design specs and budget. Both in-person and remote testing provides crucial feedback to any user-experienced designer. You have completed remote versus in-person usability testing.