RE: User research

[Sean Hower <hokumhome -at- freehomepage -dot- com>]

One thing about interviews versus observations.

People do not always have a clear understanding of what they do and why. Their perceptions often do not match what is actually going on. During an interview, you may ask something like "What are the steps you use to get your job done." The interviewee might respond with six steps. If you were to put that same interviewee into his/her own working environment and observe the steps they follow to complete their task, the reality may actually be different. This is due to a number of different reasons, including the interviewee's own perception of the kind of information the interviewer is looking for. The interviewee will selectively filter out information because they think it's not important or they are not even aware of it.

The questions you ask can and will influence the answers you get, and that in turn will have a dramatic effect on your results. That's why observations are usually the best route to go. You can watch and note exactly what the interviewee is doing. You can then ask questions as they go along. You'll find that the interviewee may not have answers to simple questions about why they do what they do, mostly because they probably haven't even thought about it themselves.

And don't forget to try to get a good cross sampling of people to observe and interview. The common mistake is to interview only power users or only newbies. You want to get a broad spectrum of participants to really understand what's going on. This will cost you time and money though. So it becomes a balancing act.


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"And in the morning, I'm makin waffles." ~ Donkey
Sean Hower - tech writer
http://hokum.freehomepage.com

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