Screencasting software is a perfect tool to help with usability testing for a website or a software application. Usability testing essentially helps gauge how “usable” a site or program is: Can users intuitively find what they’re looking for? Are users taking the intended path from A to B as they navigate? How quickly can users navigate?

Even with the most well-thought-out sites, there are often surprising insights and results when they are put to their first real-world test.

When you are ready to test your website or program with real users, it’s helpful to be able to record user feedback and information so you can analyze and compare processes between individuals.

When Telestream launched its new website last year, we used ScreenFlow to record our usability testing. We set up a computer with an iSight camera and a small microphone. We launched ScreenFlow in the background so it could unobtrusively record mouse movements, keystrokes, as well as users’ narrative and facial expressions as they tried to navigate our new site.

We asked users to accomplish certain tasks on our site – such as purchase a product, find a datasheet, or get customer support. We asked them to explain their thought process out loud as they clicked through the site so we could record their thoughts as well as their mouse movements.

When they finished, we were able to play back the results immediately as a picture-in-picture ScreenFlow project, so we could talk to each user directly about certain choices they made. Also, as we went through the ScreenFlow, we could insert notes directly onto the screen, so when reviewing the movie later we had all the information in one place. It was an enormously helpful exercise, made easier by ScreenFlow’s ability to capture everything.

NOTE: Just as I was finishing the writing of this post, I saw a Tweet from a  ScreenFlow customer, Navigate Tomorrow, about how they use ScreenFlow as part of their usability testing business. See their interesting post and sample video: Usability Studies – The Why’s and How’s.

Do you use ScreenFlow in an innovative manner? Tell us your story!