To learn more about what I’m talking about, see this blog post, “How to Make a Tiny Terrarium in a Light Bulb,” that I wrote for the fantastic blog The Hipster Home. It describes how to get started with basic terrarium/light bulb endeavors.

In the past week my terrariums have started moving in a new direction because of a cat. While eating dinner with friends at their house, we kept leaping up to move their terrarium (I gave them this one) away from the inquisitive paws of their highly active teenager cat. I realized that building terrariums with a loose substrate, like what I wrote about in the Hipster Home post, was pretty risky. They are just too fragile.

So I started experimenting with ways to retain the organic feel of a terrarium while constructing it in a way that would be more stable. Many failed experiments with polyester resin later, I figured it out.

What looks like water in these terrariums is actually resin. You can pick these up and shake them and they’ll stay intact. The tillandsia that I “rooted” in the resin is still doing well.

I realized that terrariums that are essentially all one piece can be safely shipped. I started an Etsy store thinking that maybe I could start funding this kind of weird hobby.

My next experiments will focus on resin; what is the right temperature for it to cure properly? How long should I wait after pouring the resin before I can water the plants? Will the tillandsia continue to grow happily despite being stuck in plastic?

I’m sure you’re waiting with baited breath for my findings, so I’ll be sure to report back. Also, I’ll be tracking my terrarium project over at Tiny Terra.

The program description:

Remote research can raise the quality and lower the costs of your user research efforts; using a combination of surveys, video, screensharing, and phone, you can connect with a much broader range of users than you could using traditional lab-based usability tests, while using resources more efficiently than you would doing contextual research. In this workshop-style talk, Juliette Melton will cover recruiting sources, technology tools, and caveats you might not have thought of, including managing time zones and participant distraction. We will also address pros and cons of increasingly popular non-scripted research services.

I hope to see you there!

I already have some awesome clients and am busy doing work I love. Not bad for six weeks in! If you are interested in learning more about how I can help your company, whether a stealth-mode startup or established enterprise, do drop me a line at juliette@deluxify.com.

Watching Japan from Juliette Melton on Vimeo.

Audio: hwy chipmusik by x|k

The DIYsummit will take place online. This does not, however, make it a “webinar” at least as far as my definition goes. A webinar is a slog through PowerPoint slides, presented online by a lifeless salesperson trying to sell some enterprise software solution. The DIYsummit looks like it will be a well-crafted and really engaging online learning experience.

Anyway, wish us luck and I hope to see you online tomorrow!

In a classroom, the instructor can look around the room to see if the students look confused or bored. This feedback helps her know if she should go back and explain a difficult point in a different way, or maybe tell a good story to wake the audience up. She can also ask poll the students, through a show of hands or more advanced solution, to discern the level of expertise of the group. She can then adjust her presentation as necessary.

A webinar instructor cannot see her audience. She doesn’t know if people are paying attention or falling asleep. She can’t easily poll her audience about their understanding of the material. She slogs through, slide by slide, with no way to easily adjust her delivery of the content or even know that she should adjust it.

Now let’s think about what a website can do, pedagogically. A user can go through material at his own speed, diving deeper into subject matter that he’s interested in or looking up any words that he hasn’t heard before.

The rigid nature of the webinar environment means that participants can’t adapt the experience to meet their learning needs, like they can on a website, and the instructor can’t adapt her presentation delivery like she can with an in-person lecture.

I posit that the webinar could be a much better learning tool by incorporating some of these aspects of in-person and online learning:

• Have the slide deck available for viewing or downloading at the beginning of the presentation. The participants can then go back and look at previous slides if they missed something, or skip ahead if they want to understand where the discussion is going.
• If the screen sharing tool has a chat function, use it. Ask the participants at the beginning of the session to share their level of expertise with the subject matter. You can make this easier by specifying for example that 1=newbie, 2=somewhat familiar, and 3=very familiar, and have them just type that one number. A quick scan will help clarify what kind of audience you have.
• Decide on a Twitter hashtag for the session, and share it at the beginning. Encourage participants to use the hashtag in their tweets. Monitoring the Twitter backchannel is a good way to know if the participants are bored or confused. (They are unlikely to use the screen sharing chat function to do this.)
• Share a list of URLs with the participants where they can get more information about your subject matter. Advanced members of your audience will benefit from being able to go deeper into the topic while listening to the presentation.
• Encourage the participants to use either the screen sharing chat function or Twitter to ask questions during the presentation.

Let me know if you have other tips! Let’s make webinars a better learning experience.

This has lots of benefits, most notably:

• I’m able to talk to people all over the world, not just in San Francisco.
• I can see how the participants use the site on their own machines and browsers.
• Recruiting is typically the most difficult and annoying part of doing user testing. Remote testing is easier to recruit for, since it doesn’t require the participant to go anywhere.

The technical side to this isn’t super easy, but it shouldn’t dissuade you from trying remote testing. I learned the basics of how to set up remote testing thanks to help from my awesome friend Nate Bolt. (Be sure to read his book on remote research when it comes out later this year!)

Here’s the skinny — UserVue is a great tool that is specifically built for remote testing. However, it only works on PCs. If you’re on a Mac, you have to assemble more of a Rube Goldberg-ian app suite. I did lots of tinkering with settings and applications to make this work; when I was done, I realized that these notes could be helpful for others.

THE TOOLS

You will need:

• Mac (either laptop or desktop)
• Acrobat Connect for screensharing. You do not need to buy the “Pro” version, Acrobat Connect Pro. Note that the Adobe site hides the cheap, non-Pro version. Cost: $39.95 a month.
  
  UPDATE:
  There is a free version that is basically the same but has shinier icons. It’s also slightly less annoying. In this version, you need to click on the participant name and request that they share their screen — no need to “autopromote participants to presenters.”
• Soundflower to enable audio recording. Be sure to also install Soundflowerbed during the installation process. Free
• iShowU HD for recording screensharing and audio. You do not need to buy the “Pro” version, iShowU HD Pro. $29.95
• Skype for audio. Free to use but you will need to pay to call phones from Skype. Pay in increments of €10.
• Headset for using Skype. You will need a headset that has a built in microphone. I’m using the Plantronics GameCom Pro 1 for no other reason than I found one in our office. It works well.

(Note that if you’re on a PC, UserVue does what Soundflower + Connect + Skype + iShowU does.)

SETUP INSTRUCTIONS

Sound on the computer:

Under System Preferences on the Mac, select Sound, then:

• Output: Soundflower (2ch)
• Input: headset

Soundflowerbed:

Under Soundflower (2CH), change from None (OFF) to headset

Select “Audio Setup…” then Audio Devices

Skype:

Under Preferences, select Audio

• Audio Output > Soundflower (2ch)
• Audio Input > headset

iShowU HD:

In the menu bar, make sure:

• Microphone capture enabled
• Application capture enabled

Go to Advanced Options and click on the megaphone to adjust sound preferences.

• Select: Record audio from applications
• Select: Record sound from input device
• DO NOT Select: Monitor input device
• Select name of headset from dropdown

Choose the area of your screen to record. Click “Choose” to select your capture area and toggle over to your Adobe Connect window and trace around the meeting space.

Adobe Connect:

Under “Meeting,” select “Auto-Promote Participants to Presenters

SESSION MECHANICS

• Moderator calls participant using Skype. Audio quality will be better if you call them on a mobile or landline number rather than on Skype.
• Make sure that they are at the Connect URL: http://connect.acrobat.com/XXXX
• Instruct the participant to Select “Enter as Guest” and type their name. Tell them that you will approve them to enter the meeting. Approve them to enter the meeting once they have done this.
• Ask the participant to click “Share Your Screen.”
• Tell the participant that they will be prompted to install the Adobe Acrobat Connect Add-In if they don’t already have it.
• Connect will then open for them in a new window. Ask them to click “Share Your Screen” again.
• Tell the participant that where you see “Start Screen Sharing” select “Applications” then the name of the window where the website is open that you’ll be discussing.
• At the end of the session remind the participant to select “Stop Sharing” at the bottom of the Connect window.

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I’m interested in hearing about your experiences doing remote testing. Do you have gripes? Inspiring stories? Tips for other people doing user research? Good luck and have fun!