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

[Jacob Beauregard <deadowlsurvivor gmail com>]

Calum Benson wrote:
> 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 :)
I wouldn't so much consider it as a screening mechanism so much as a 
grouping mechanism, one group is just much larger in terms of proportion 
of overall users than the other, and the larger group would likely give 
less useful feedback, even though you do want their feedback in either 
scenario.
> Cheeri,
> Calum.