ten Keys to Success Chapter 10 299 product. Or if you wanted to get a little fancy, and spend a little more, you could send webcams to some of the participants and record their interactions via an application such as TechSmith's UserVue or WebEx. 10.3 teSt early in the deSign phaSe We can't stress enough the importance of running online usability studies early in the design phase. Some researchers only think of online usability testing as something that should be done as part of a summative research plan, following completion of the final design. This simply is not the case. If you limit online usability testing to the end of the design phase, you're missing one of the unique strengths of this approach. You're not just limited to testing live or fully functional Web sites. Testing par- tially functional prototypes or even screenshots is not only possible, but also quite easy to do. Look at the case studies (Chapter 9) for some inspiration. A participant only needs to look at a wire frame design or even a concept of a design to get a good idea of how it might work. They don't even need to inter- act with it. In fact, we have found that very early prototypes, in black and white, using a sketch-style font, are one of the most effective ways to communicate to