Tables. Percentages. Pie Charts. I'm serious. Sometimes I refer to this as being "scientistic".
I always approach research problems with a somewhat scientific framework (coding activities, keeping tallies). It's just important to be clear with yourself that the samples sizes you are dealing with generally mean that true quant claims are meaningless. And, heck even dangerous, sometimes. That said, it's especially helpful for skeptical clients who are quant jocks. Just make sure to let anyone on the project who actually gets the difference know what's up. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jared Spool Sent: Friday, May 30, 2008 3:31 PM To: christine chastain Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] qualitative and quantitative research On May 30, 2008, at 12:35 PM, christine chastain wrote: > Does anyone have any experience with "making" qualitative research as > quantitative as possible? This is a rather nebulous idea in my mind > for the > moment but I was thinking about something like using images from > still or > video footage and tagging those such that they could be coded in a > quantitative way. Sort of like a heuristic evaluation on steroids. We've been doing it for years. Most of our research is based on it. It's hard work, but quite doable. At one point, we had a sign in the office that read: "Scientific advancement through mind-numbing manual labor." Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
