Whether you're planning moderated or unmoderated research, remote or in-person, capturing the user's screen or not, here are the basic steps to help you get the ball rolling with your Lookback research.
Contents
✅ Create project & round(s) for your session(s)
The first step to starting your research with Lookback is to create a Project and a Round of research where you'll capture your Sessions.
In the simplest terms, a Lookback Session is a single recording with a single participant. As you're creating your round, you'll need to decide if you're doing moderated study where you will be there to help the participant through the experience, or will the session be one where your participant will complete the session on their own time? Some addition resource below to help you decide:
Round types
Moderated
Unmoderated
Regardless of the type of session you're doing, all sessions are started by the participant. For unmoderated sessions, they'll start whenever they like. If they are doing a moderated session, the participant will initiate by using the Participant Link they've been sent and then the moderator will join them from the Lookback Dashboard.
✅ Recruit your Participants
Participants are at the heart of your research. You can recruit participants for your research project through our integration built with User Interviews for an additional cost or you can bring your own participants from any other source.
✅ Pre-session communication
Preparing any one who part-takes in research is essential to ensure successful sessions: moderators, participants (a.k.a. testers, users, respondents), and observers alike.
Our email templates give the researcher baseline information to customize and send to participants when inviting them to your research projects
If you're planning to have colleagues and other stakeholders sitting in in a session, you can add them as team members or just invite them as guests. Either way, you can use the Observer Lobby or Public Links to invite them to observe sessions live or after they've been completed. You can also share this Observer Guide with anyone who will be observing sessions.
✅ Set your participants up for success
As a moderator, you need to be aware that many things can determine if a session will be successful or not. Things on the participant's side that improve your chances include:
a stable wifi connection
a fully updated device
check settings for the connection so that nothing is blocking Lookback data (e.g. firewalls, VPNs, security software, etc).
If you're doing a LiveShare round, you can also use Lookback's Participant PreCheck to ensure they can get through the onboarding steps prior to your session
After the session has been completed, you'll see it in your dashboard under the respective Round
Additional Tips