On Aug 26, 2009, at 11:00 AM, Adrian Howard wrote:
On 25 Aug 2009, at 19:18, Nick Gould wrote:
*As an aside, I think it's interesting that many of your arguments
against eyetracking could also be leveled against clickstream
analysis / clickmaps, etc... I am amazed at how willing clients are
to believe that this data is meaningful on its own.
Yeah. I've had "discussions" with a few people recently about
clickstream/heatmap results:
Them: "Look everybody's clicking here where Y is - we want them to
do X. We should move X to Y's location"
Me: "Erm.... maybe it's because they want X? Or the language talking
about Y is wrong? Or..."
Them "Look - this person has been on the verge of clicking on this
area for ages. Look at them wiggle the mouse around".
Me "Did you ask them?" (turns out the person in question was
stopping his over-eager laptop screen dimming kicking in while he
read the text in the body of the document)
Then again - at least clicks are (usually) instances of somebody
actually wanting to interact with something. They've been a great
tool for helping demonstrate that bits of the interface that look
"clickable" should actually do something useful (or not look like
they should be clicked on.)
People click on things all the time that are *not* things they
inevitably want. Thus the problem with pogosticking (http://is.gd/
2AiMU).
The problem with clickstream analysis is you can't tell the misfired
clicks from the desired clicks.
Nick is right -- all the problems I have with eye tracking, you have
with any instrument where you don't know "why" something is happening.
It's all about the inferences you make from the raw observations.
Jared
________________________________________________________________
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
