Synchronizing With Usability Participants

October 20th, 2008 | Methodology

You must synchronize with your usability participants to establish a rapport and clear communications

When conducting one-on-one usability testing, you’ll be meeting a variety of people, each of whom has different communication styles. In order to get the most out of the participant and the session, you must synchronize with your usability participant, to help promote open and clear communications between the participant and you. By synchronizing with the usability participant, I am able to more easily make the participant feel calm and at ease, which helps the usability test by promoting a more open and honest dialog from the participant.

How to Synchronize with Usability Participants

When conducting a 1-on-1 usability session, have you ever had a participant who is extremely quiet, who only looks at the screen and provides no verbal feedback? Perhaps you’ve also dealt with a participant who was extremely negative, pretty much finding fault with everything, even before the test starts! I’ve found over the years of conducting testing that the best way to handle these situations is to establish a rapport with the participant, by synchronizing my communication style with their style.

There are multiple steps I use to synchronize, I won’t go into too much detail with each step in this post, but will provide a quick overview of how I synchronize to give you the big picture.

First: I establish open body language and a positive and warm attitude when first meeting the usability participant.

Second: I use my introduction and warm-up session with specially developed open-ended questions to establish what type of communicator this person is.

Third: I match my communication style to the communication type of the participant, either Visual, Auditory or Kinesthetic.

First: Establish Open Body Language

Do you sometimes find yourself sitting across from someone with their legs crossed, their arms perhaps crossed over their chest and maybe turned somewhat away from you? Those are all closed body language positions. At other times, do you find yourself across from some who has the arms open, their body directly facing you and perhaps slightly leaning forward? This is an open body language position.

When conducting the preliminary introduction prior to the 1-on-1 usability testing sessions, it’s critical that I immediately establish open body language and a positive attitude, making sure I clearly face my participant, using open gestures and leaning forward & smiling to communicate with them and establish rapport. Usually the other person responds in like manner, and we quickly establish a synchronization of body language. However, at times the participant will demonstrate closed body language to my open position. When this happens, I quickly but smoothly switch my body language to match the participants closed language. As we continue through the introduction, I gradually easy my position to a more open body language, and observe if they start following my lead and synchronizing to a more open body language. By synchronizing with them, I establish a rapport with their body language, and then over the course of the introduction the participant becomes more at ease, and I understand the communication style of the participant.

Second: Use Open-ended Questions

Asking open ended questions, and then observing they communication style of the usability participant as they answer the questions, is an important way I establish exactly what type of communication style the participant uses, which helps me synchronize with them. What’s an open-ended question? “What do you think…?” “How did you like…?” “Why did you say…?” are all examples of open ended questions. They are called open ended questions because they require a response that promotes communication from the participant. Examples of closed ended questions are “Do you like…” “Can you find…” or “Did you see…?” Closed ended questions require a one or two word response back, and are “closed” in the sense that they do not enable a dialog from the participant.

By asking open ended questions to the usability participant, the participant can talk and express themselves. Their answers, and the language they use to answer, provide important insight into how they process information, and how they communicate back to the world this information. Open ended questions are a great warm up device too, they usually get the usability participant more comfortable with talking to me, which after all will be critical to the rest of the usability test. Finally, open ended questions help me frame the domain expertise, the taxonomy and the values the participant brings into the test, which helps me frame and clarify the subsequent responses to the testing that the usability participant will be sharing with me.

Match the Visual, Auditory or Kinesthetic Communication Style

I carefully note the words the usability participant uses when answering my open ended questions. Does the usability participant, when answering open ended questions, use words or phrases such as, “appears to me…” “looks like a good idea…” or “clearly it will…”? These are all visual type words, identifying the participant as a Visual type communicator. Perhaps the usability participant uses words like “sounds like a plan…” “I hear you” or “voice my opinion about…” These are all Audio type words which helps define the participant as an Audio type communicator. Maybe the usability participant uses words or phrases such as “feels good to me…” “I’m leaning toward…” or “fits like a glove…” in which case these feeling words help define the participant as a Kinesthetic communicator, one who uses touch or feeling words to define their experience. Remember that nobody will always use only one style of word, and so it takes practice to observe which style of words the usability participant seems to favor.

Once I’ve established what I believe is the communication type of the participant, either Visual, Audio or Kinesthetic, I then match my communication to theirs, to help me synchronize with them and build a rapport. I’ve found that by understanding the communication type it also helps me better define the results of the usability test, for example, understanding that when a visual type communicator tells me she “see that this is organized” she’s not necessarily referring to the visual location or style of the item, but instead may be communicating her belief that the task is relative organized, or simple. I’ll follow-up with additional probing questions in those situations to firmly establish her meaning.