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>According to Jacob Nielson, a usability study with more than 5 subjects is
>counterproductive. Personally, I find this flies in the face of accepted
>statistical analysis.
Much of the usability testing done in business environments for Web sites
and application software is qualitative, rather than quantitative. Testers
often do not time tasks, error recovery time, and so on. Rather they look
for obvious usability problems evidenced by more than one user stumbling
over a particular screen, dialog box, or icon. They also use
focus-group-like debriefing questionnaires. If you have five to seven users
and no measurements, you cannot get statistical certainty, but any major
usability issues will be painfully obvious to all observers after just a few
users.
Often testers iterate qualitative testing. After the first test, developers
change the system and documentation, then re-test to see if they
successfully fixed the problems identified in the previous test.
Measuring and achieving statistical certainty is VERY expensive--prohibitive
in many commercial environments. A single, qualitative usability test can
easily cost $15,000 to $25,000, even if only five to seven users are tested.
To achieve statistical certainty, such a test would involve six figures.
Certain companies like telephone companies do use statistically-valid
testing that count keystrokes. Savings of a few keystrokes, multiplied by
millions of users, adds up to huge dollars. This savings justifies the cost
of getting statistical certainty.
IPCC 01, the IEEE International Professional Communication Conference,
October 24-27, 2001 at historic La Fonda in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA.
CALL FOR PAPERS OPEN UNTIL MARCH 15. http://ieeepcs.org/2001/
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