Appendix E. Online Research

There are many good ways to better understand your customers, from traditional usability research, which we covered in Appendixes A through D, to newer forms of research enabled by the Web—what we call online research. Although traditional in-lab usability studies are especially useful for formative research that helps qualitatively determine which site design alternatives work best, certain forms of online research can also be employed for formative research, while other forms of online research are best for summative studies that quantify how much better one design is over another.

We define two types of online research:

  1. Remote usability research provides a live connection between researcher and participant, sharing ...

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