Re: [Usability] Usability Digest, Vol 55, Issue 5

[Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>]

On 5 Nov 2008, at 20:09, Jacob Beauregard wrote:

> The biggest problem that's going to occur is that most people have  
> an extremely strong preconceived notion of how a desktop should  
> behave, and while you want to have representation this group, it  
> can't be the only group that's represented if you really want to  
> improve the desktop experience.

Very true... probably makes it more important for us to consider the  
learnability of any proposed designs, too.  We can't necessarily  
expect people to "get it" the first time they use a completely new  
desktop, but if they're comfortable and productive within a week, then  
we might be onto something.  If it takes them six months, we're  
probably not.

> Fortunately, I recently discovered a clever solution to this. You  
> could weed a lot of these people out by building a survey with a  
> very open-ended question that suggests an answer. Then you can see  
> who responds with the suggested answer.
>
> Example survey question where the results were usually echoed from  
> the suggestion, however with exceptions:
> --------------
> What interests you in the field of Computer Science? Why?
> (Ex. Do you enjoy creating things? Do you enjoy knowing how stuff  
> works?)
> --------------
> Then you can find the people that don't simply echo, and at the same  
> time you can also represent the people that do echo, it's just  
> easier to find the other people that don't echo way.

Sounds like a good idea-- the screener questionnaire is certainly an  
important part of selecting participants for any study.  But I've  
always been lucky enough to have other people around to do that part,  
so I'm not really all that qualified to comment :)

Cheeri,
Calum.

--
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson sun com            GNOME Desktop Team
http://blogs.sun.com/calum             +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems