Larry, I couldn't agree more. I'm pretty much born and bred in your approach to design research, but I guess I'm just keen to learn for myself whether I'll get any distance out of remote UT with prototypes. Because the costs are low, the benefits don't need to be huge for it to be a valuable adjunct to traditional face-to-face research. For example, I find that though I'm often personally "sold" on a finding, when it comes to evaluating cost of implementation, suddenly only having 1/5 or 2/5 users worth of evidence can raise question marks. I suspect that having data like "40/50 user tested could complete the task given" / "XX/50 rated it as satisfactory or better" / "XX/50 indicated they understood the core product concept" / etc - these kind of broad findings, however foggy, would still be worth having.
I vaguely recall, in another thread, Jared mentioning that user researchers at Google sometimes use eye tracking specifically because it's appealing to the engineers (who hold a lot of political clout)... i.e. they choose a method that produces evidence that's most compelling to their audience; as well as using a method that is most effective at generating insights for them. >From this perspective I also think remote UT may prove useful for people in certain political situations. Still, it's different stroke for different folks! Harry ________________________________________________________________ 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
