I'm assuming you're talking about usability testing (face to face lab research)...
I often start studies with an open exploration task (imagine you've arrived here from google and you want to find out what the site is all about), and then follow this with a self defined task (I get the user to tell me what they want to do, then let them do it). Following that, I then have a list of compelled tasks that I will give the user if they didn't already cover them. One benefit is that the whole thing feels natural to the user, and they often appear more motivated and involved. One weakness is that your notes will be all over the place, as users jump about haphazardly between pages, sections and activities. Another weaknesses is you will have minimal quant data, so things like task failure rates, task times, and so on will not be captured (IMHO this is fairly worthless in a small qual study anyway). It really depends on the context of the site you're testing, your research objectives, and the politics of your workplace... Harry -- Harry Brignull User Experience Consultant http://www.90percentofeverything.com ________________________________________________________________ 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
