Speak-aloud studies capture participants’ thought processes by recording them as they work through your questions and tasks. Verbal responses are a great way to gather qualitative data, capture first impressions, and hear the nuances and sentiments that written answers often miss.
Try our new AI Interviews feature if you would like AI to moderate responses to your study.
When to use speak-aloud studies
Understanding the reasoning behind participant actions and decisions.
Capturing emotional reactions as people interact with your designs.
Adding qualitative depth to survey-style studies.
Scaling think-aloud research to more participants than you could moderate live.
Setting up your study
Create your study with the questions and tasks you want participants to complete.
In the Build tab, click Recording in the left sidebar.
Toggle on Microphone to enable audio recording. Optionally, enable Webcam and Screen recording too.
In your Welcome step, let participants know they will need to speak out loud during the study.
Add an Instruction step at the start to explain your expectations for response quality.
Important: When Microphone is enabled, Ballpark includes automatic quality control. Participants who do not provide enough verbal feedback will be automatically rejected. This is why your study must be clear that speaking is required.
How to write speak-aloud prompts
Use Instruction steps rather than written question steps for speak-aloud questions. Participants get confused when they see a text box and a prompt to speak out loud at the same time.
Do: Use an Instruction step with a clear prompt like “Please describe out loud what you see and what catches your attention.”
Do not: Use a text Question step and ask participants to “speak or type your answer.” This causes inconsistent data and can lead to automatic rejection.
If you also want a written summary, add a separate text question step after the speak-aloud instruction.
Tips for better results
Add bold “speak out loud” prompts to every step that requires verbal feedback, including website tasks, prototype tasks, card sorts, and preference tests.
Keep studies under 15 minutes. Speaking aloud is mentally tiring, so shorter sessions produce better quality feedback.
Use a video guide on early steps to demonstrate what speaking aloud looks like.
Consider enabling screen recording alongside microphone recording, especially for website and prototype tasks, so you can see what participants are referring to. Note that screen recording is only available on desktop devices.
Next steps
For live, moderated think-aloud sessions, see run moderated interviews. To manage your recording settings, see record participant video/audio/screen.