Discuss: Inside Your Users’ Minds: The Cultural Probe
by Ruth Stalker-Firth
- Editorial Comments
2 Monitoring instead of asking
Since the question you ask already influences the user I think it is better not to ask at all. Instead you should monitor the user while using your product/website/whatever. You can see so much when just analyzing the real world usage of your product.
posted at 01:49 pm on March 28, 2007 by Dave Bishop
3 Monitoring and Asking
It is very important to get feedback, when users testing a new product. By monitoring you get only results for the usabillity, but you will never know what the user is thinking about the product and this could be something completly different.
posted at 02:50 am on March 29, 2007 by Thorsten Schiemann
4 Market research or usability test
The discussion above shows that the article did not make clear whether it’s about market research or “only” about usability. If you want to figure out what new products to launch of course you have to ask questions. But if the product is really new and the person you ask does not know such a product yet, the answer might not be accurate. As the author said the person is influenced just by asking this question in a specific environment. This is ok – as long as you are aware of that and maybe ask the same question in different environments.
posted at 07:35 am on March 29, 2007 by Handy Andy
5 Hi
If you want to figure out what new products to launch of course you have to ask questions.
posted at 10:47 am on March 29, 2007 by bernardclind bernardclind
6 hi
If you want to figure out what new products to launch of course you have to ask questions.
posted at 10:48 am on March 29, 2007 by bernardclind bernardclind
7 Hi!
beauti ful Colour combination
posted at 11:52 am on March 29, 2007 by bernardclind bernardclind
8 Hi!
beauti ful Colour combination
posted at 12:02 pm on March 29, 2007 by bernardclind bernardclind
9 Comments roundup
The article starts with ‘Theoretically, usability testing…’ so for me it is about usability and not market research. But as humans, we interpret things in different ways based on our experiences thus far – user or designer/author or reader – so something which is clear to me might not be to someone else (leaving aside the fact that we ‘read’ differently on screen). And this carries over into our work.
Analyzing user behaviour without talking to users (either shadowing/videoing them or electronically: click capture/web metrics/eye tracking/etc) can be a nice way of working but you need to be careful that you don’t introduce your own interpretative bias. There has been much research into ethnomethodologically informed ethnography which tries to avoid introducing bias when interpreting the results of a study which is normally done by following a prescribed method. We are all biased so why not ask your user about his biases?
The best thing about usability testing is that clients can hear a user saying something which is obvious to us but not to them and which they might not fully understand if you just told them ‘how it is’. The best bit about cultural probes is that you get to see user motivation and context, or situatedness, which affects all things!
Rather like when you find a HCI lecture series tedious – this can be because of the time of day, the mood you are in, the lecturer (heaven forbid!) and whether you are motivated to learn about HCI or not. I used to ask my students what they thought of HCI at the start of my courses and some would say, “Rubbish, I hate it all,” but if I introduced certain topics within a context which interested them, by the end of a lecture I could have the same students uttering things like ‘That was really interesting.’ and motivated to turn up next time even if it was Monday morning 9am. Context is key. And so is feedback, so thanks for your comments.
Ruth
posted at 12:07 pm on March 29, 2007 by Ruth Stalker-Firth
10 Hi!
beauti ful Colour combination
posted at 12:09 pm on March 29, 2007 by bernardclind bernardclind
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1 Suddenly I'm back at university in HCI class
I must confess, at uni I found HCI stuff incredibly tedious, yet now that it’s of use to my work, my interest is sparked. A nice, light midweek read. Thanks
posted at 12:30 pm on March 28, 2007 by Mathew Browne