Comments on: Initial Impressions of Silverback

By: And Budd

And Budd — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 12:43:37 +0000

We do all our testing on a Mac and have never come across any issues with people using a Mac vs. PC. However if people do get confused by things such as ctrl vs apple keys, you simply discount the effect they had and move. After all, you’re looking to test the usability of the interface, not peoples skill with the keyboard or OS.

By: antonio

antonio — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 12:10:40 +0000

I have to agree that being mac only is kind of a bummer. Every user test I’ve ever facilitated was done on a pc…it’s still the majority and people that use pc’s get easily thrown off by something as simple as the ctrl vs. apple keys.

And I want to thank this article

By: Dennison Uy

Dennison Uy — Tue, 27 May 2008 16:02:27 +0000

As much as I’d love to run this on one of my bigger projects, I feel it is a bit too constricting to force the users use my desktop to demo a website. I’d rather have them work their way on their own machine. All of them use Windows, so having to teach them how to surf the site a Mac on an unfamiliar machine would be too much of a hassle. Is there a similar Windows version of this program?

By: Kyle Meyer

Kyle Meyer — Fri, 16 May 2008 14:59:03 +0000

@steve: You’re right, I did misunderstand you.

However, there is no reason why you couldn’t fire up parallels and use a Windows style keyboard for the user tests. Start up Silverback, flip over to Windows and have them use Internet Explorer if necessary, or whatever browser they’re familiar with to reduce error.

By: Andy Budd

Andy Budd — Fri, 16 May 2008 14:45:15 +0000

In my experience the testing platform really doesn’t make much difference as people are not interacting with the OS. Instead they are interacting with the site through a browser. If you have concerns about using Safari then Firefox is a good alternative that many subjects will be familiar with. You can also hook up a two button mouse for those people hooked on the right click. And in all honesty if you can run usability tests on paper prototypes then the minor OS differences shouldn’t be a problem.

By: steve

steve — Fri, 16 May 2008 11:00:14 +0000

Heh, no, I understood that perfectly; actually you misunderstand me I think.

What I mean is that 6% of our visitors are on Macs, which I’m afraid imho means it’s not a very representative platform for user experience testing. Yes, of course, web apps are supposed to be browser neutral and you’re doing UAT not technical compatibility testing, etc, etc; but I’m afraid in reality I don’t believe the average Win+IE punter, when plonked in front of OS X and Safari, is going to be completely and utterly unaffected by the platform. I know whenever I surf on a mate’s mac I find Safari and OS X in general all fiddly, things not where I expect them, accidentally close things I don’t mean to, etc.

By: Kyle Meyer

Kyle Meyer — Thu, 15 May 2008 13:35:53 +0000

@steve: I think you misunderstand, Silverback is an application that you install on a particular laptop, then you give that laptop to another user for the length of the test. It doesn’t record all of your website visitors who are on Macs.

By: steve

steve — Thu, 15 May 2008 13:05:59 +0000

Awesome. Finally an easy way to get solid, detailed user experience testing for… er… 6% of our visitors.

By: Zacharias

Zacharias — Sun, 11 May 2008 02:30:16 +0000

We’re forgetting the most important thing here: Silverback’s beta page does layers better than i’ve seen on the web.

By: Kyle Meyer

Kyle Meyer — Thu, 08 May 2008 18:39:26 +0000

@Simon Douglas: With default settings the filesizes are a bit large. A one minute quick run was 88MB, and a 10 minute user test was almost 900MB. Granted, the resultant file is a .mov that could be compressed further as needed. Audio and the picture-in-picture webcam can be disabled to save filesize if unnecessary, and you can even pick the best webcam size for your needs. Anywhere from 160 by 120, all the way up to 640 by 480. Obviously larger webcam recordings will up file size yet again.