If you’re using a recruiter, reach out to her to see if the participant has contacted her. If the participant hasn’t been in touch, ask the recruiter to call the participant (or give you the participant’s phone number) to check her status—is she late, or not coming?

 While waiting for the participant, identify how you can adjust the study plan or method based on when she arrives. For example, if you’re doing a summative study, you may want a very late participant to attempt at least a few tasks so you have more data, whereas for a more formative study, you might decide to do a product walkthrough instead where you bring the participant to specific areas rather than asking her to get there on her own.

 Consider putting together a quick survey or written version of your background questions that you can ask the participant to quickly fill out on her own. For more on this idea, see section 15.2.

 If you have a floater or backup participant available, consider starting with her instead. If your scheduled participant arrives later, you can step outside to thank her for coming in, provide her with her compensation, and let her know that she can leave early.

 Update all your observers on the session’s status, especially if you have remote observers who may be wondering what’s happening as you’re talking to the in-facility observers. A good solution, if applicable, is to enter text on the computer or device being shared with the observers, letting them know that the participant hasn’t arrived yet (or any other status update necessary).

 If you have remote participants who you’re trying to get in touch with, leave a status message for observers. For example, “9:05 a.m.: Tried calling participant, but no answer. Will try again in five minutes.” We suggest not using a screen-sharing program’s chat feature to do this, as the participant may see the entire conversation later. Something like a document or text file works icely. If you get in touch with the participant, close the document before you bring her in to the remote session.

 If the participant arrives late, be gracious and sincerely thank her for coming in.

 If the participant arrives extremely late and even a little bit of feedback will be helpful, consider running an abbreviated session.

 If she is willing to stay later, and your schedule allows for spilling over, continue with the session past the scheduled end time. Just make sure not to go beyond the total number of minutes for which the participant was promised compensation.

 If she is unwilling or unable to stay late to make up for the lost time, bring her through as much of the prioritized parts of the session as time permits.

 If she is so late that even this isn’t possible, let her know that you’re unable to run the session with her. If she asks for her compensation, provide it to her unless you specified that the compensation was contingent on arriving by a certain time. For more on this decision, see section 15.2.

 “I’d like to use the 20 minutes we have with the participant to do just a quick walkthrough of the design. So for this session only, I’ll be showing her things and asking for feedback, rather than having her attempt tasks on her own. I think this is the best way to obtain feedback on all the important parts of the design in a short amount of time. Does that sound okay to you?”

 “Because we’re getting started later than planned, are you able to stay after your scheduled time so we can get as much of your feedback as possible? About how long can you stay?”

 “I’m sorry, <we won’t have enough time to run the session/we’ve started the session with another participant>. I know that you did your best getting here, so we’d still like to compensate you and give you some time back in your day.”

 Don’t blame the participant for being late, no matter how frustrated or irritated you are.

 Avoid making veiled comments about how much more you had planned to get through if the participant had been on time.

 Ask the recruiter to ensure that participants arrive 15 minutes early to fill out forms or to “check in.” If there are typically traffic or parking issues in a particular area, or a known event or construction is happening, have the recruiter warn participants about scheduling extra travel time and suggest alternative methods of transportation.

 Obtain the participants’ cell phone numbers so you can call them directly if they’re running late. Ensure that the participants also have a contact phone number for you and your recruiter in case they’re running late.

 Schedule backup or floater participants for sessions when it’s extremely important to not have a late or no-show participant (discussed more in section 15.1).

 If budget is a concern for your study, consider working out an arrangement with the recruiter where, if the participant is not at your location within a certain number of minutes of her scheduled time, she’ll not receive her compensation. If you do explore this option, we definitely recommend having a backup or floater system so you don’t end up with empty timeslots. Include the use of floaters in your proposal to the stakeholders who manage your research budget, although keep in mind that this system probably won’t reduce your compensation costs.

 9.4 Participant cancels or is a no-show

 If the observers are loud, but not laughing, take responsibility for their rudeness and apologize to the participant for the interruption. Then, excuse yourself to ask the observers to quiet down for the remainder of the session.

 If the observers are in another room, remind them that you’re able to hear them through the walls and that the participant is also able to hear them.

 If the observers are in the room with you and causing the distraction, take them outside the room for a brief chat and ask them to stay quiet for the remainder of the session.

 Regardless of where they’re located, let the observers know that even if they’re laughing at something unrelated to the participant or the session, the participant may feel like she is being laughed at, which will affect her behavior and her comfort.

 If the observers were laughing, reassure the participant that she is not being laughed at, even if you think that is what the observers were doing. Try to make her feel comfortable, even if you have to use a pretext for the observers’ behavior, such as:

 (If it’s not obvious where the sound is coming from): “There’s another meeting space next door and there might be another meeting going on.”

 “The observers often get into intense conversations about the product and stop paying attention to the session, so you’re probably just hearing part of their discussion.”

 “<Participant>, I apologize for the noise. Please excuse me while I go ask the people next door to be quiet.”

 “I just want to let you know that the participant and I are able to hear you. This is making the participant feel very uncomfortable, and that is my number-one priority, so forgive me for being direct—if you aren’t able to be quiet in here, please go to another part of the building. Remember that our participant is giving her time to us today and deserves to be treated with respect.”

 “No, the observers are definitely not laughing at you. Right now they’re probably discussing the best way to address the issues you’ve uncovered today. I’m going to go remind them to keep their voices down.”

 “No, absolutely not. Everyone observing today is really grateful for your feedback. They just sometimes stop watching the session and become distracted by other conversations, and get loud about it. I’ll go talk to them to make sure they pay attention!”

 “I think that was actually sound coming from another conference room on the other side of this area, and they may not know we have a study going on. Excuse me for a moment while I go let them know.”

 Don’t let the participant think she is being laughed at, or that the loudness coming from the next room has anything to do with her or her actions.

 Provide ground rules for observers ahead of time that include remaining quiet during a session, and let them know that they’re required to take them seriously. See section 15.4 for more about these ground rules.

 6.9 Observers are not engaged in the session

 9.5 Observer unexpectedly interacts with the participant

 9.6 Session interrupted accidentally by an observer or someone else

 Survival Story: “Are they laughing at me?” at the start of Chapter 1

 Let the participant chat for a few seconds, as she may immediately tell the caller that she’ll call them back later.

 Remind her that she is still being recorded, or just pause/turn off the recording if you have an easy way to do so. The reminder may encourage her to get off the call quickly.

 If the participant is remote (e.g., she is on her office speakerphone with you but you hear her answer her mobile phone):

 Ask the participant to mute herself and unmute when she is free.

 If the participant is gone for a long period of time, speak up on the call to try to get her attention, or contact her through the screen-sharing chat feature or email to gauge when she’ll be able to resume the session.

 If the participant is in-person:

 Mute the audio for observers. If you don’t have a quick and easy way to cut off the sound (e.g., because your observers are in an observation room as part of a usability lab setup), remind the participant that she can still be heard in another room.

 If the participant continues to talk and the conversation doesn’t seem to be ending soon, stop the recording and take a break.

 If it seems like an important phone call, you can also offer to bring the participant to a more private room.

 Once taking a break, check back in with the participant after five minutes or so and ask how much longer she’ll be so you can plan accordingly.

 When you resume the session, consider asking the participant to mute or put her phone on a silent mode for the remainder of the session. If the participant says she needs to keep the phone on and/or says she is dealing with an important situation, be understanding, but prepare yourself for subsequent interruptions.

 If it seems like the participant is distracted and/or upset by the phone call, you may need to take some additional care to keep the participant comfortable and reevaluate the plan for the session. See section 12.3 for additional tips about this situation.

 “Sorry to interrupt, but I just wanted to remind you that you’re still being recorded. Should I pause the recording?”

 “Let’s take a short break so you can finish this conversation. <I’m going to turn off the sound/you might want to step outside/let me bring you to another room, because others can hear you right now.>”

 “<Participant>, there are some observers on the line and we want to be respectful of your privacy. Can you go ahead and mute this conference call and unmute when you’re done?”

 Even if you want to, do not snap at the participant. Give her the benefit of the doubt—even if you think she is dealing with a frivolous situation, you don’t truly know what is going on.

 Ask participants to turn off or at least mute their phone at the beginning of the session.

 9.7 Session interrupted by someone the participant knows

 If the participant canceled, let any observers know that the scheduled participant will not make it. If the observers are upset, try to absorb the responsibility as much as possible rather than blaming the participant or recruiter, which can come across as unprofessional. If the observers include stakeholders, use this opportunity to refocus the conversation and discuss the best use of the session time moving forward.

 If you have scheduled a backup or floater participant (as discussed in section 15.1), you can start the session with her. Keep in mind that if you’re starting the session late, you may need to shift the focus of the session by adjusting your method or study plan to accommodate a shortened session duration.

 If you don’t have a scheduled backup or floater participant, decide if it would be appropriate to find someone onsite who is either qualified for the study on her own or could act as a surrogate user. This technique is most appropriate when you have a very general set of recruit criteria. If you do leverage a surrogate user, make sure to manage expectations and appropriately weigh that person’s feedback when discussing results with stakeholders.

 “It looks like the participant isn’t coming. Would you like me to look for a replacement in this office as a surrogate user? It won’t be an actual end user so we’d have to weigh the results carefully, but we have the timeslot and may get some insightful feedback.”

 “I know you <flew out here/cleared time in your busy day/etc.> specifically to see these sessions! I’m sorry that we’re unable to secure a participant for this session; we’ll make sure to confirm again for the other participants. Let’s talk about what the best use of this time may be.…”

 Don’t badmouth or otherwise disparage the no-show or canceled participant, even if you’re frustrated over the situation. Remember to stay professional.

 Make sure that the recruiter is clear with scheduled participants that they will be participating in a one-on-one session. Participants may not feel guilty about canceling if they assume that they’re in a focus group and will be covered by other people.

 Set expectations with observers that no-shows and cancelations happen, and work with them to establish appropriate backup plans for the best use of time when it does.

 Schedule backup or floater participants for sessions when it’s extremely important to not have a late or no-show participant (e.g., if you have observers flying in from out of town to observe your research, or know that important stakeholders will be watching a particular couple of sessions).

 9.1 Participant is running late

 First, quickly try to figure out why the observer felt the need to interrupt, and what tone she is taking with the participant. Is she probing for more detail based on something the participant said or did? Or is she being defensive about the product or topic being discussed, and is trying to clarify an assumption or constraint? Or worse, is she verbally attacking the participant for not understanding a concept or for doing something that she didn’t agree with?

 If the observer is following up on something that the participant said and is not being emotional or argumentative, you might let the participant answer the question as long as it won’t take you too far off track from the study plan and the research goals. However, you also need to ask the observer to go back to quietly observing (and if she is remote, to also mute her phone) and hold off on additional questions until the agreed-upon time.

 If the observer is asking a question that comes across as defensive, gently reword her question for the participant so it sounds more neutral.

 If the observer is remote:

 Remind everyone listening to keep their phones muted. If you’re leaving time at the end of the session for questions from the observers, remind them of that as well.

 If your remote observer is being argumentative or accusatory and you’re using a screen-sharing application, use any available options for muting an attendee’s audio (e.g., in WebEx right-click/contextual-click on the observer’s name to mute her). While extreme, keep in mind that your first responsibility is to provide a safe and comfortable environment for the participant and that the observer is violating that rule.

 If the observer is onsite and has entered your research space, get the observer to return to the observation space and stay there for the remainder of the session. You may need to get up and walk her out of the room with you.

 If the observer continues to be argumentative or problematic, take a quick break so you can talk with her privately. Pay careful attention to how the participant reacts to the interruption and adjust accordingly. If the participant seems nervous or scattered, adjust your tone to be calm, focused, and reassuring. Reset the context for what you were doing before the interruption. For example, you can ask the participant to re-read the task or summarize what the participant had been talking about. Take a quick break if the participant seems especially rattled.

 “I’m about to call the participant. Just a reminder to everyone listening to keep your phones on mute for the duration of the session. Please check to make sure you’re on mute now.”

 “<Observer>, I appreciate your perspective on this. <Participant>, let us know what you think, and then, for the sake of time, I’d like to get back to our planned questions. If we have time at the end of the session, we can pursue this topic further.”

 “I’d like to bring us back to the <task/question>. Let’s come back to this issue at the end of the session.”

 (For a remote session) “Just a reminder that all observers should keep their phones on mute. There may be a chance for additional questions at the end of the session, but for now we need to return to our planned questions.”

 “<Participant> , what <observer> meant to ask was <rephrase neutrally>.”

 “<Observer>, please keep in mind that <participant> is here to help us improve the product. It’s good for us to see how she thinks about and approaches this. There are no wrong answers here. Now, I’d like to bring us back to <task/question>.…”

 “<Observer>, let’s step outside for a moment.” (Once outside): “This session is meant to be one-on-one between me and the participant. Your interactions with the participant seem to be making her uncomfortable. I don’t want her to feel evaluated, and I’m worried we won’t be able to accomplish the goals of this session if you continue. It would help if you could just observe and remain quiet for the rest of the session. Does that sound okay to you?”

 Don’t let the observer take over the session.

 Don’t enter a verbal altercation with the observer in front of the participant. If the conversation gets heated, bring the observer outside of the research space and out of the participant’s earshot.

 Provide explicit ground rules to your observers ahead of time to remind them to be respectful of the participant and the goals for the research (see section 15.4 for more about this). These rules should also specify what kind of interaction (if any) they’re allowed to have with the participant. Stress the importance of you maintaining control of the session so the participant always knows who to talk to. Here are some examples of ways that observers can get you their questions:

 Ask observers to write down their questions for you to ask at the end of the session (or for them to ask, if you’re comfortable letting them do so). We typically recommend this approach as it is the easiest and least distracting to implement.

 When an observer is in the room, have her pass notes with questions to you. Let the participant know about this ahead of time so she is not surprised or distracted.

 When observers are remote or located in another room, have them use an instant-message program to communicate with you in the middle of the session.

 If your session is remote:

 At the beginning of the session, before the participant is on the call, let remote observers know that the session is about to begin and to please mute their phones.

 Take advantage of any available options within your remote testing application and/or conference calling system to automatically mute all observers. Tell observers ahead of time that they should mute their phones when they join the call—you can’t be too careful!

 9.2 The observers are loud and distracting

 9.6 Session interrupted accidentally by an observer or someone else

 9.7 Session interrupted by someone the participant knows

 Survival Story: “‘Too dumb’ to yield meaningful results”

 Get the interrupter out of the room as quickly as possible. If the interrupter is lost or looking for something in particular, take a moment to help her or direct her to someone who can.

 Apologize to the participant for the interruption, and let her know that you don’t anticipate any more interruptions going forward (then hope for the best).

 Remind all observers to put their phones on mute.

 If you’re using screen-sharing software that has an embedded conference call, you should be able to manually mute the offending observer (e.g., in WebEx, by right-clicking/contextual-clicking on the observer’s name and choosing Mute). If you can’t find this functionality, you should be able to eject the observer from the meeting, which will disconnect her audio. Conference calling systems sometimes have a similar ability to mute everyone or eject certain attendees.

 If you can still hear the observer (e.g., if she has stepped away from her phone and you can hear background conversation), ask a colleague to send an email reminding all observers to mute their phones. You may also need to pause the session for a few minutes, especially if the noise is very loud. This pause may give the disruptive observer a chance to get back to her desk and realize what is happening.

 If you have access to another conference call number, you can ask everyone to join a new call instead. If the participant is remote as well, be sure to give the new information to her, or let her know that you’ll call her directly to conference her in (depending on your setup).

 If you don’t have the time or means to set up another conference call, you can simply just call the participant directly and not let any remote observers listen to the remainder of the session. If you do so, send out a message to the observers (or have someone do so on your behalf) so they understand why you made the change and offer to share any recordings.

 If none of these options are possible solutions for you, you can try to continue the session and tolerate the distracting sounds. If the noise from the offending observer is too loud for this to be a viable option, ask the participant to wait until the noise issues get resolved. While this may mean that you have to end the session earlier than planned, hopefully all the steps you’ve taken in the meantime will prevent this from happening again—with this group of observers, at least.

 “I’m sorry, this room is being used for a research session. It will be available <later/at X time>.”

 “<Participant>, please hold on for just a moment; we’re getting some background noise. Could everyone on the call please make sure that your phone is muted?”

 “<Participant>, please bear with me while I work with my team to try to get in touch with the person making the noise. I am going to mute my phone and step away for a few minutes. Please stay on the line.”

 If you think you know who the offending remote observer is, try not to call her out by name unless it’s the last resort in getting her attention. Make a generic announcement about everyone needing to mute their phones and attempt to get in touch with the observer some other way, like email, instant message, or through the screen-sharing application with a private chat message.

 If your session is in person, put a sign on the door of your study space to let passersby know that they should not enter the space.

 If your session has remote observers, take advantage of options within your screen-sharing application or conference call system to automatically mute all attendees from the start (except for the participant, of course; you may need to call her separately if she is remote). Also, tell observers ahead of time that they should mute their phones when they join the call—you can’t be too careful!

 9.2 The observers are loud and distracting

 9.5 Observer unexpectedly interacts with the participant

 9.7 Session interrupted by someone the participant knows

 If you’re in the middle of something critical or time-sensitive with the participant, let the interrupter and participant know how much more time you need to get out of that critical process, and see if she is able to wait that long.

 If not, offer to take a break so the participant can deal with the interruption immediately. Set a time limit for the break, although accept that the participant may need more time than you’d like.

 If the person interrupting the session seems angry or forceful toward the participant, minimize your presence and step out of the situation as much as possible. If your presence is making the situation worse and is creating the conflict, apologize, thank the participant for her feedback, give her the agreed-on compensation, and end the session early.

 “We’ll be done in just <number of> minutes. If it’s okay with <whoever is interrupting>, would you be able to wait until then?”

 “<Participant>, why don’t we take a quick break so you can handle this? Let’s plan to resume in 10 minutes.”

 Don’t be inflexible and insist that the participant continue the session with you. Letting the participant deal with the situation will keep her from being distracted and/or irritated.

 These situations are difficult to avoid in a participant’s environment, and you may not want to avoid them. Interruptions may be a regular part of the participant’s life and you can learn a lot about whether these interruptions are typical, and how her workflow or approach to tasks is affected. You may be able to follow up with the participant about the interruption and gather feedback that you might have missed otherwise.

 However, if you’re less interested in the specifics of a participant’s environment (e.g., you’re just performing an interview), ask the participant when arranging the session if she can schedule a conference room or some other private space that may minimize the potential for interruptions.

 9.3 Participant receives a call during the session

 9.5 Observer unexpectedly interacts with the participant

 9.6 Session interrupted accidentally by an observer or someone else