A controlled environment testing session is moderated in person or remotely by a trained researcher; who walks through the tasks to participants, answers their queries, and asks follow-up questions. Conversely, an uncontrolled test is done without direct supervision; participants might be in a lab, but it's more likely they are in their own homes and/or using their own devices to browse the website that is being tested. But they can also be unobtrusively monitored by the researcher.

As the name suggest participants can be geographically in any location but would be instructed by trained researchers to brief them on the tasks to be performed and they are observed and analyzed based on their body language and facial expressions and follow-up questions.

Contextual testing is a semi-informal method to obtain information about the context of use, where users are first asked a set of standard questions and then observed and questioned while they use the website or application in their own environments. This method suits when an existing application needs revamp or enhancement to collect maximum possible data for the existing users.