From: Caolan McNamara (Caolan.McNamara at domain ul.ie)
Date: Fri 24 Sep 1999 - 10:52:11 IST
On 24-Sep-99 Donncha O Caoimh wrote:
>Interesting story, but I think it's frightening to think that the MS guy
>didn't even read the README file on the game CD before contacting Loki
>Tech Support. Are all Windows users so ready to ignore documentation and
>dive straight into a new program? (rhetorical question..)
This was surely usability testing, we do this ourselves here. My particular
area of focus is "advanced users", i.e. those with a clue. But for many hci
studies they take beginner users, folk who might never have turned on a pc
before, or varying ages and backgrounds. Some from off the street or whatever.
Definitely this character was probably not a microsoft employee, or if he
was he could very well have been completely non-computer related one. He might
well have not been a computer user at all. Indeed he probably wasn't, if there
was user testing going on between linux and windows, wouldn't it make sense to
take people who were new to either system ? so as to get better results, that
would be my thinking if I was running the study. Id run one study with those
who have seen neither system before, and hand each group a preinstalled system
and a few cds, and some basic training and let them rip. video them, and record
their difficulties, and rewrite the system to take account of that.
My contention is that these sort of studies are important but that in general
the hci community has been obsessed with making computer systesm easier for
a beginner to get going in, and taking studies such as i have described where
new user meets system, we now have the first 2 days of using the system perfect
but that follow up studies where you come back to those users 3 weeks or 2
months later, and repeat with the now "semi-advanced users" another set of tasks
to flush out the long term usability problems. You won't find much material on
long term usability studies in computing, actually i reckon you won't find any,
all focus on the first 2 hours :-), and sometimes questionairres might be filled
out some days or weeks later, but doing usability studies right takes for ever,
and by the time they are finished they are woefully out of date.
The most recent set of EU standards published last year or there abouts on
computer ergonomics has somewonderful useful ideas, like the earth shattering
contraint that from now on keyboards on personal computers *must* be seperate
from the main part of the machine, so there !. A bit dated eh ?, well ergonomic
and hci work takes a long time.
Anyway to get back on topic, new users to an area will do just about anything
to avoid reading documentation, indeed they feel that computers should require
no reading at all. They come with an attitude problem that computers are hard
to learn, and therefore they dont attempt to learn them at all. In other areas
they show amazing sense, car driving, microware using, complex banking, but when
it comes to a responsive interactive device they lose all of their common sense
and fall into a mode where they expect the computer to be able to read their
intentions. Odd really, and i'll be very bloody glad to get out of this hci
world so I dont have to deal with them.
C.
Real Life: Caolan McNamara * Doing: MSc in HCI
Work: Caolan.McNamara at domain ul.ie * Phone: +353-86-8790257
URL: http://www.csn.ul.ie/~caolan * Sig: an oblique strategy
Its centre
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