Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited a common Sense Approach to Web Usability Steve Krug

The logistics of mobile testing
When you’re doing testing on a personal computer, the setup is pretty
simple:
The facilitator looks at the same screen as the participant.
Screen sharing software allows the observers to see what’s happening.
Screen recording software creates a video of the session.
But if you’ve ever tried doing tests on mobile devices, you know that the
setup can get very complicated: document cameras, Webcams, hardware
signal processors, physical restraints (well, maybe not physical restraints, but
“Don’t move the device beyond this point” markers to keep the participant
within view of a camera), and even things called sleds and goosenecks.
Here are some of the issues you have to deal with:
Do you need to let the participants use their own devices?
Do they need to hold the device naturally, or can it be sitting on a table
or propped up on a stand?
What do the observers need to see (e.g., just the screen, or both the
screen and the participant’s fingers so they can see their gestures)?
And how do you display it in the observation room?
How do you create a recording?
One of the main reasons why mobile testing is complicated is that some of
the tools we rely on for desktop testing don’t exist yet for mobile devices. As
of this writing, robust mobile screen recording and screen sharing apps
aren’t available, mainly because the mobile operating systems tend to
prohibit background processes. And the devices don’t really have quite
enough horsepower to run them anyway.
I expect this to change before long. With so many mobile sites and apps to
test, there are already a lot of companies trying to come up with solutions.
My recommendations
Until better technology-based solutions come along, here’s what I’d lean
toward:

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