I realise 'went wrong' is not the correct term here. We're not testing the user, we're testing the site. (Hence the quote marks). Anyway:
Take this hypothetical scenario: You're running a usability test and one of the scenarios is to see if the participant can find a way to get in contact with your company in a way that won't have people in their office listening in on what they're contacting you about. (Basically a scenario geared around finding out how easy it is to find the Live Chat option on the website).
However the participant looks around a few areas of the site and finds an mobile telephone number field in the site footer and states that they would probably just send a text to that number.
Well, that obviously isn't the result you were hoping for, but it's a very valid test anyway as it suggests that you've not presented the Live Chat feature in an intuitive way.
However, because they didn't find the section of the site you were after you may feel like you want to find out why they didn't click on the obvious 'Begin a Live Chat' button that's been there all along.
But should you point that out to them?
The benefit of doing so is that you can possibly get some additional feedback as to why it wasn't noticed.
The negative of doing so is that you may make the participant feel a bit stupid for not noticing it (which they obviously aren't; it's your site design at fault, not them).
So what to do? Point these things out whenever they get to the end of that particular scenario? Soldier on with the testing and reveal all the bits they missed at the end? Don't mention any of these things to them at all?
Answer
Asking someone why he didn't notice something isn't likely to provide useful information. People will confabulate a response for the sake of their own mental consistency without even realizing they've done so.
We can only focus on a few things at once; if we don't notice something, it's because we were paying attention to something else. He didn't notice the gorilla because he was looking at the basketball players. She didn't notice the Live Chat because she was looking at the telephone number. Seeing what someone did notice implicitly tells you why that person didn't notice something else.
At the end of each task, we ask participants "Was there any other way you could have completed the task?"
This question lets you see whether the user is able to discover the alternate way you had hoped they would find without explicitly pointing it out to them. Even if they don't see any alternate way of completing the task, this still gives you information about what they are seeing so that you can graphically de-emphasize that in addition to emphasizing whatever you do want to be found.
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