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

[Allan Day <allanpday gmail com>]

> >> 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.

It'll be important to get background information from participants about
their previous desktop experience. Conducting observations, we should
also be looking out to see at which points people's behaviour is
directed by habits picked up from existing systems.

> >> 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 :)

Personally, I'm unsure about how useful a pre-questionnaire would be in
this particular respect, since I wouldn't expect there to be a simple
relationship between people's conscious understandings and how they use
the desktop. Let's sit them down at the prototype with a task (or
whatever it is that we end up using) and see what happens. If we need
to, we can ask questions about their actions either as they go or
afterwards.

I'd have concerns about classifying people according to a predefined
schema (if that is what you're suggesting). In this situation, it would
be much better to generate our own groupings through observation and
analysis, rather than relying on pre-existing conceptualisations of
behaviour.

Allan