From: "Seamus Byrne" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> : Microsoft is applying for a patent to monitor user's brain waves in : order to determine the effectiveness of user interfaces. Could this be : the end of user testing as we know it?
Kevin Larson of Microsoft presented a paper at the British HCI group conference in 2006 where he described using a variety of techniques to measure the aesthetic effects of reading, including measuring changes in the corrugator muscle that is associated with frowing. I assume that the technique described in the article is an extension of that. It sounded really barmy to me when I originally read the paper but Kevin's presentation somewhat convinced me. He was trying to distinguish between different electronic presentations of written material where typographic experts immediately saw that one was better than another, but ordinary people said that they didn't see any difference. (For the typographically inclined, it was in things like whether the text had rivers of whitespace or not). This is a long way from my normal work i.e. I'm mostly working with stuff where the users can easily perceive differences and those differences are important to them. Personally, Laron's presentation went in the 'interesting but not useful' bucket for me. I'd take the view that if my target users include typographic experts, then I'd make sure that I took account of their opinions. If my target users don't include typographic experts, I might still take account of the experts' opinions for other reasons e.g. because I'd like it to be reviewed favourably. If the users can't see any difference, then I'd probably say 'that's good enough' and spend the effort on something else that's not yet good enough rather than on wiring users up to measure their corrugator muscles. And I think I'd have just the same reaction to using EEG. But your mileage might vary. (Ref: the abstract of the paper is half way down this long page: http://www.bcs-hci.org.uk/hci2006/programme/fullpapers.html which should be enough info to track it down if you felt like it. best. Caroline Jarrett [EMAIL PROTECTED] 01525 370379 Effortmark Ltd Usability - Forms - Content : ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://gamma.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://gamma.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://gamma.ixda.org/help
