You are right.... If the first commandment of UX is: You are not the user
then the second is The user always lies. (I am a huge fan of House :-) Ok... that is a bit bold, but it has been proven over and over that even when users are not being untruthful outright, they often times do not even know what they have done - even if they did it only 10 minutes ago. A survey combined with user observation will end up providing the most useful and actionable information. A simple survey after completing a set of tasks will most certainly be almost useless. Not as useless as not doing an testing whatsoever - but certainly not provide the kind of valuable, actionable data needed. I highly recommend you quickly run and get "Observing the User Experience" -- accept that book is a bit big - perhaps for something more reasonable - get Steve Mulder's "The User is Always Right" which provides some great arguments to use with stakeholders and decision makers about using qualitative and quantitative user research. - W On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 9:03 AM, Tamlyn Rhodes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The company I'm working for is redesigning their account control > panel. We'll be releasing the functionality in stages and running it > as a beta alongside the existing control panel. > > I've been set a task to write a series of questions that users will be > given the option to answer after using the new control panel to asses > "usability, accessibility & design". I've told them that what users > say and what they do are often not the same and that the only way to > do it is with user testing (which we will also be doing) but they seem > dead set on the survey idea. > > Can a survey/questionnaire yield useful results in this kind of > situation? I think a simple text box for feedback and bugs would be > better. Any suggestions? > > Cheers, Tamlyn. ________________________________________________________________ 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
