An unmoderated is when a participant will complete the study on their own time without a researcher present. A video will be uploaded of them verbally responding to tasks while interacting with your prototype or website.

How many participants should I recruit for this study?

• The recommended number of participants for an unmoderated study is 5 - 10.

Guide to crafting questions for unmoderated studies

Make sure to ask enough questions to get the participants talking. If you only share a link and one question, they won’t have enough prompts to speak for 10 - 15 mins. The best practice is to ask around 10 - 15 questions per study. We’ve listed a few tips below to keep in mind when crafting questions for an unmoderated study.

• Give testers direct instructions and tell them what you want. Good phrases to use:
  • Scroll up on down the page
  • Don’t click just yet
  • Click on…
  • In your own words describe…
• Tell participants 'how long': Asking a participant to review your website freely is a great way to receive unsolicited feedback. However, make sure to tell them how long to review. For example, say, "Please spend 2 minutes reviewing the app." This way, participants know how deep they should go into reviewing.
• Check your links before launching a study (especially prototype links). The best way to check a link is by pasting the link in “incognito mode” on your computer to make sure your share settings are set to “public” and you don’t have any browser caching issues.
• Be concise: Long paragraphs of text and multiple questions within one question can distract the tester which leads to a greater chance they'll miss something important. For reference, any task over 50 characters is likely too long.
• Refrain from assuming: Convey what you'd like participants to do. Don't assume that participants have any knowledge of the usability testing space. Unless you ask participants to provide feedback on specific things, don't assume that they'll inherently know what to do.
• Use simple language: Instead of saying, "Does this website feel cumbersome?" instead, ask "Does this website feel difficult to use?".
• Don't forget to note any guidelines: When participants freely review your website, they may go down a rabbit hole. Adding "Don't click off the homepage" can save participants from spending too much time on an irrelevant part of your website. Instead you can say: "Please spend 5 minutes reviewing the website. Don't click off the homepage just yet."
• Focus on what's important: Participants are paid for ~15 minutes of their time. Focus on one objective at a time. For example, if you're looking to test your product onboarding, don't add questions about marketing messaging in the same study.
• Any final thoughts? We recommend asking the last question, “Any final thoughts?” this is a nice way for participants to summarize their thoughts from the full study and reflect on if there was any final feedback they have.