Laura Faulkner has written a reasoned article on sample size. You can find a copy at:
http://www.geocities.com/faulknerusability/Faulkner_BRMIC_Vol35.pdf The number of participants issue depends on a number of issues including the risk inherent in the product, the number of distinct user groups, whether you are using the sample in many rounds of iterative evaliuation designed to filter out problems over the course of the design cycle (formative versus summative), the complexity of the UI, the number of paths possible, ..... If you look in the ACM Digital Library, you will find a number of articles related to the number of participants. Chauncey On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 2:05 PM, Chris Ryan <[email protected]> wrote: > I have been looking, unsuccessfully, through back issues of interactions > magazine for an article, published a few years back, written I believe by > someone from Microsoft as part of a debate about statistical significance in > usability testing. There was something of a debate about testing with large > numbers of users, and this article, as I recall, made an eloquent case for > sticking to six to eight participants. Does anyone remember this? Perhaps I'm > wrong in recalling that it was in interactions. > ________________________________________________________________ > 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
