Live Conversation note taking: Best practices

This article applies to: UserTesting 

On this page:

• About the Live Conversation note taking tool
• Note taking tips

About the Live Conversation note taking tool

• When you join a Live Conversation, choose Join with note taking to use UserTesting's note taking tool for your interview.
  
• Notes are visible to any team member attending the session, but they are not visible to the participant.
• With note taking enabled, you won't be able to give mouse control to participants.
• After the Live Conversation, save time by going directly to your timestamped notes to rewatch insights you flagged as important.
• Note taking is compatible with Chrome and Edge browsers.

Here’s a brief demo of the feature in action:

Note taking tips

Before launching the Live Conversation

• Determine which issues you want to focus on. Preparation is key, so come up with a game plan. 
• Assign roles to observers. Having a colleague take notes allows the moderator to attend the interview and interact more freely with the participants.
• Use tags to identify notetakers and categorize topics. Decide on a few key tags (e.g., #jane or #confused) in your note-taking guide before your Live Conversation. Tags make notes and clips easy to find when reviewing a Live Conversation session.
• Prepare your colleagues. Consider making a note-taking guide available that they can follow as you moderate. Remind them to:
  • Click the Join with note taking button on their invitation to use the note-taking feature. They must also be logged into UserTesting.
  • Avoid entering notes into the Chat function, as these notes will be visible to the participant. 
  • Mute their audio during the session.

During the Live Conversation

• Use shorthand notes to bookmark moments. Unless a person is assigned specifically to take notes, keep your notes short—a single word or phrase is often sufficient for post-session recall—to keep pace with the conversation.
• Add more tags as you complete the session (if you feel additional tags would be helpful in post-test analysis).
• Observe verbal and nonverbal cues. Much of what people "say" is nonverbal, and taking notes lets you pinpoint participant reactions on the video timeline.

After the Live Conversation

• Add and edit notes. After the session, you can create new notes and clips, as well as edit your notes from the session—adjusting the time code, adding more tags, and marking notes you deem important with a star.
• Search by tags. Tags make it easy to find related clips and combine them to create a highlight reel. You can also do a CTRL+F function to…
  • Search the transcript for keywords that you think will point to useful insights. 
  • Locate the start of a question.
• Share notes across the organization. Note-taking helps you make your case when creating highlight reels, producing Excel reports, and publishing videos. 
  • From the video player, you can share the notes you apply to individual clips.
  • Click the three dots (...) next to the clip.
  • Choose Share.

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