Frank, Good job on trying to empirically investigate this issue -- it's a thorny one. That said, though, I do have a concern about your methods.
Am I correct in thinking that you were the sole evaluator of the final products of the three groups, at least in terms of the heuristic analysis? And given the constraints of the study, I'm guessing you also knew -- prior to that analysis -- which groups used the personas and which didn't? If so, then the possibility of experimenter bias really hurts your conclusions. Subjective analyses of performance (e.g., heuristic analysis) are pliable, and if you knew beforehand which groups were using personas and which weren't, it would be easy to mold the results into something that matches your expectations. On the other hand, if you were blind to that condition, then that would give your conclusions a little more weight. Mike . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=42315 ________________________________________________________________ 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
