Anyone who has ever met me in a library context knows that I go on and on about asking the user. Well, I’m in the middle of conducting usability studies. I’m not only asking the user, but *watching* the user (because sometimes what they say is not what they do). I just completed Phase 2 of 4, and with the help of three great folks, we’re hoping to finish it by July 1st. Details will follow, and hopefully publication will come thereafter; but for now, I’m swamped in data.
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Today has been spent explaining that @IE can't keep up with web standards, which is why "everything looks broken." @firefox, ppl, @firefox !
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March 25th, 2008 at 10:15 am
It must be that time of year… we’re doing usability testing at Emory too. We’re getting ready to implement a new OPAC/”discovery tool” and desperately trying to cram in some testing on the old system for comparison.
It’s eye-opening actually watching a user conduct a search, isn’t it? We’ve had faculty come in to test who don’t know how to find a book given a topic. And they sure do hop away from the library tools to search pretty often, and then come back for the last step to actually locate the specific item they want.
March 25th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
“because sometimes what they say is not what they do”
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20010805.html
Say what you will about Neilsen, he’s right on here. Users have sent me down WAY too many wrong paths.