Re: [Usability]Insert/overwrite, how should i do a usability study?

[Calum Benson <calum benson sun com>]

On Sun, 2003-01-19 at 20:50, Alan Horkan wrote:

> I don't think changing from INS to OVR is appropriate without more feedback
> to the user.  

<paperclip>It appears you want to type over all the stuff you've just
laboriously entered and not notice until half of it has gone
forever.</paperclip>

As somebody else pointed out, the most common convention is to use an
I-beam cursor for insertion and a block cursor for overwrite (and I
think there's still a bug open against gtk requesting the same), so any
editor worth its salt should probably try to do that.

You could also argue, since "Insert" doesn't generally have an LED
indicator on the keyboard like CapsLock, NumLock etc. do, that it would
be useful to have Insert and Overwrite items on the Edit menu to show
and change the current mode.

> I know i would need to record the study, if i have a it well prepared pen
> and paper observations might be enough.  if there was some way to record
> what was happening on screen would be good.

Don't believe everything you read about usability labs, video/screen
recording is rarely essential, unless you're not going to be doing the
usability analysis yourself... although it's certainly nice for putting
together highlights to send to engineering teams if they can't be there
to witness the study.  (IIRC Jared Spool and his team rarely if ever
record their sessions, and they have a great reputation for web
usability studies.)

> I would like to do this properly and scientifically even if that means not
> getting the results i want.  Advice welcome.

I'll ask our other GNOME and StarOffice HCI guys for hints on actual
tasks to perform, they're usually better at coming up with good onees
than I am :)  But as always, the subjects you choose will probably be at
least as important as the tasks you ask them to do.

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson sun com            GNOME Desktop Group
http://ie.sun.com                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems