Lessons Learned

• Not everyone knows what user testing is; be prepared to explain the process
• Try to anticipate factors outside of your control that might influence the process; for instance, I began recruiting participants a few weeks before user testing began. Although not a major problem, by the time user testing began, due to local harvest and other commitments, some people's schedules had changed. It turned out that the user testing was the easy part and the scheduling harder.
• Although Google Ventures specifies to call prospective participants on the phone, I found that in an informal situation where I am already familiar with the prospective participants, email or even facebook messaging worked better for ensuring contact (ex. if person has given home phone number, but is not at home regularly)
• If needed, make an effort to recruit a diverse group of prospective participants; only women signed up to be participants in my user testing for this project
• Use language that most people will understand (for example, not everyone understands what the word "ephemeral" means)
• In order to be flexible with scheduling, I planned to do user testing in a room off of the office, in case someone happened to be working in the office at the time; the room off of the office is not usually air conditioned, and though I felt okay, I quickly learned that some people have a lower tolerance for warmer temp
• I hand wrote some notes; I am a fast writer, but could have been better to have transcribed from a recording
• I found that during the user testing, there were a few questions that I ended up feeling did not fit into the natural flow of questions, and spontaneously chose to omit them