Contributor View: unlock a deeper understanding of your customers by remotely capturing facial expressions

How much of our communication is non-verbal? It’s a topic that is often discussed and debated—but misrepresentation aside, there’s no denying that facial expressions provide additional context when communicating. While there’s no single number that validates its importance, if current events and the shift to Zoom calls, FaceTime, and Google Hangouts are any indications, we’re hungry for more than voice alone.

Customer reactions to assets, messages, and other experiences are not new for us here at UserTesting. But what is new (and exciting!) is the ability for you to capture your customers’ facial expressions and receive a picture in picture style video recording with a simple toggle. 

Introducing Contributor View for unmoderated studies

To truly understand the delight and frustration that can occur during certain experiences, you need to go beyond voice alone. With this new feature, you will gain more insights and context from contributors, remotely, by seeing their facial expressions as they answer questions, complete tasks, and react to assets and experiences. 

Capturing this type of non-verbal communication is typically resource-intensive and done in an on-site lab environment that is currently not an option for many companies. Nonetheless, the ability to glean insights from non-verbal customer feedback quickly and remotely has never been more important:

• Add context to your test analysis by capturing non-verbal clues
• Easily assess changes in gaze and emotion that can often be overlooked with voice alone
• Gain deeper context via body language cues such as confidence and interest 

Build even more empathy among stakeholders

When conducting user research, traditionally, results are returned to business stakeholders in the form of click paths, quotes, usability videos, and other forms of quantitative results like answers to multiple-choice and rating scale questions. While all this information is crucial and helps drive better business decisions, there’s still a missing piece to the puzzle. 

With the added ability to now generate clips and highlight reels full of emotion—displaying positive and negative associations with your product or experience—stakeholders are more easily able to see exactly how people feel about them. 

Launching unmoderated studies with Contributor View

Launching unmoderated studies with face recording has never been easier. During the test creation flow, you are now able to toggle Contributor View—allowing you to turn on, or enable, the feature.

The power of facial expressions is undeniable and really allows decision-makers to relate and empathize with their customers in ways that could only previously be accomplished in a lab. If you’d like to give Contributor View a try, it’s available for use on both desktop and mobile experiences.