Remote usability evaluation: discussion of a general framework and experiences from research with a specific tool

The goal of this chapter is to present a design space for tools and methods supporting remote usability evaluation of interactive applications. This type of approach is acquiring increasing importance because it allows usability evaluation even when users are in their daily environments. Several techniques have been developed in this area for addressing various types of applications that can be used in different contexts.We discuss them within a unifying framework that can be used to compare the weaknesses and strengths of the various approaches and identify areas that require further research work to exploit all the possibilities opened up by remote evaluation.