Some of you may remember my call for research subjects back in October of last year. Well, for all of you that participated, as well as others that expressed interest in my study, I wanted to let you know of our findings.
After taking think-aloud protocols from a number of Macintosh and Windows experts, we looked at a number factors in hopes of findings significant differences between experts of different platforms. The three factors we looked at were as follows: tool use (including creative tool use), actions, and elaborations. I won't bore everyone with all of the details; for anyone who would like to get a bit more in-depth with this research you can see the materials that I presented at the annual American Psychological Society conference in Atlanta back in June. The presentation can be found here: http://homepage.mac.com/jessew2/computerExpertise.pdf There was a statistically significant difference found in the number of elaborations used by Mac experts in comparison to Windows experts. Prior literature indicates elaborative statements tend to indicate a more developed and robust mental model and a richer expertise of the domain in question. This has a number of implications about why this occurs. It could be a result of the platform being easier to learn, it could be that Mac users are just smarter than Windows users :) (jk). More importantly, if it is the operating system that somehow allows for a more quality expertise, knowing this might help us develop better OSes in the future that will allow an even deeper understanding and be even easier to learn to use. I have recently moved to Dayton, OH to begin an internship at the University of Dayton Research Institute and will begin my first year of graduate school in the Fall. Hopefully one of these avenues will allow me to further pursue this research and perhaps gain more definitive insight into this question. I want to thank all of you that agreed to participate in my study, your help has been greatly appreciated. Jesse Walker On Thursday, October 24, 2002, at 06:40 PM, Jesse Walker wrote: > > Hello everyone, > > I am a senior psychology major at Bellarmine University. I am > currently working on a line of research involving the nature of expert > computer users of both the Macintosh and Windows platform. I am in > need of 3 subjects that could be considered Macintosh experts. > > As I have found in my research, determining who is an expert is very > difficult (if not impossible). so you can use the following as a guide > to determine if you would be appropriate for the study: > > - do you make a living fixing/troubleshooting Macintosh problems? > - are you often found helping individuals troubleshooting problems on > this mailing list? > - can you often fix problems you're having with your own computer > without resorting to taking the issue to a professional? > > Of course if you don't fit into these categories and still feel that > you are at the expert please contact me as well. You don't have to be > a Macintosh god, but it is necessary that you have some > troubleshooting experience. > > As for the actual experiment. . . Each subject will be ask to verbally > convey how they would go about completing a certain task or solving a > certain problem. These tasks or problems will not be terribly > difficult and there are no right answers (so you can't flunk my > experiment). Since I haven't interviewed any subjects, I am unsure > about the time commitment. I can't imagine that the interview could > last more than 30-45 minutes though. > > If you would like to participate in the study, or would like to find > out more information about the research, please contact me at > jessew2 at mac.com . Thank you for your time and hope to see some of you > soon. > > Jesse Walker > > > The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will be November 26 > For more information, see <http://www.aye.net/~lcs>. A calendar of > activities is at <http://www.calsnet.net/macusers>. > | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will | be July 22. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>. | This list's page is <http://erdos.math.louisville.edu/macgroup>.
