[Web4lib] Mobile usability testing?

[William Denton]

Usability testing of mobile web sites.  Have any of you done it?  What'd 
you do?

Looking around online I see people describing rigs that fit a camera over a 
smartphone so the screen can be recorded.  Like here:

http://www.cdlib.org/cdlinfo/2011/02/15/mobile-usability-testing-rig-for-m-cdlib/

That saves you from sticking your head over the user's shoulder and 
looking like Ray Milland and Rosey Grier in THE THING WITH TWO HEADS. 
Still, it seems a bit complicated.

It'd be nice to be able to just record the phone's screen, but according 
to this, there's no way to record an iPhone's screen without jailbreaking 
it:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/200049/is-there-a-way-i-can-capture-my-iphone-screen-as-a-video

On the other hand, for Androids there's this, which I haven't tried but lets 
you capture the screen over USB, without root:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ashot/

However, the installation is non-trivial:

http://www.mightypocket.com/2010/09/installing-android-screenshots-screen-capture-screen-cast-for-windows/


Bill
-- 
William Denton, Toronto : miskatonic.org www.frbr.org openfrbr.org