Reading seminar 2 - notes (Yrin)

Note: I just realized that chap. 15 was supposed to be included in this review. I accidentally chose chapter 14 instead. Sorry about that. /Yrin

"Sometimes the findings of a field study can be unexpected."

-- Interaction Design (3rd ed.), p. 501.

As far as design work is considered, the most important reason for doing a field study is to pick up the unexpected aspects of the user vs product interactions, in my opinion.

Now, in a late-stage evaluation study you'd better hope that the product design is mostly right, but a key focus should still be to test (read: challenge) your assumptions of the design.

The course book explains the trade-offs between very controlled lab studies on the one hand, and "natural setting" field studies on the other. It's very important to keep in mind that all HCI experiments puts constraints on the subjects in the study. These constraints have to be put into place deliberately---the focus the study on whatever aspect you want to evaluate---and not be forgotten about when doing the analysis. It is equally important to select a relevant group of subjects, and to understand who these subjects are---as well as their motivations---, in order for the later analysis to be meaningful.

It is of key importance to remember that as an experimenter, you can rarely control all the variables when doing research with human subjects. Great care is needed when analyzing the results.