This Will Be My Year

- Semisonic from Feeling Strangely Fine (1998)

Hi everybody! This is my first entry of 2008. First things first, is that I have changed over my blog entry naming scheme to songs that are in my CD/MP3 collection. That ought to give me enough naming options. So there is a bunch to recap since the last entry. Right before the New Year, I went to Sacramento for Nick's bachelor party. Originally it was a trip to visit Phill, but somehow got transformed into a bachelor party trip by CWP$ and Vishnu. It was quite a fun time - Korean BBQ, shooting pool, go kart racing, dinner at the Pyramid brewery, some drinking and of course, the highlight of every bachelor party, poetry reading. Indeed, a great deal of appreciation of....poets. Now I know why the caged bird sings. Although I ended up switching my jacket with someone else because you know it is kind dark at ummm poetry readings. I also ended up accidentally stealing Phill's keys.

For the new year, my friends organized a party at a hotel suite in Los Altos. I bet a lot of you (actually none of you) are wondering: Los Altos?. Well that is what you can get only a few days before new years. Also the availability of strip...I mean poets is quite bad for new years eve. It was quite a fun night probably a little too much fun since I spent the first few hours of 2008 in agony. I also did various other activities as usual such as going to the farmer's market, used bookstore, to the city on several occasions, and all the stuff I normally do. I did got some replacement sunglasses for the ones that got stolen from me. I also got a replacement iPod. And on the subject of stealing, DJC says that someone in my apartment complex broke into my car. It is a strong possibility because somebody stole my laundry basket from the laundry room (the room that required a key that only residents have). It was only six bucks but it pissed me off royal.

This has been a particularly busy time at work lately. I am finishing up a study in where I am using a new method called rapid usability iterations. Basically, a typical usability study is there you have 7-9 participants that you test with one UI. After finishing up all the participants, you review the notes, analyze the videos, and write the report with recommendations. Then the designer incorporates the findings into design changes that may also be tested in a second round of usability, similar to the first. A rapid iterative usability study is one where you make design iterations in between participants. So I am running more participants (15) in one round but we are basically making changes during the study based off the previous participant's findings. Here are a few thoughts on the technique:

1. If your sessions are one hour in length, be prepared to be there for over 1.5 hours for each participant. Aside from the typical set-up time, there has to be discussion time after each session to discuss findings and decide if there are any design changes.

2. Must have close collaboration with your designer. The designer needs to be at every session (not an easy feat with so many participants). You have to make sure you are constant sync-up about design changes. Therefore your usability script has to change constantly.

3. At least for my study, I made observers in the room write down at least five observations, problems, challenges, ideas for each session. Based off the feedback I have gotten (since I am moderating the session, I can't tell what is going on in the observation room), observers tend to be more engaged during the study.

4. You need to exercise strong judgement about design changes. For example, there are probably some glaring design problems that are no-brainers. But there are edge cases where it could go either way. There is always a challenge in deciding to make a change after 3-4 participants or wait a few more.

5. Also on that point, be prepared to get more participants if necessary. In my study, we observed a pretty consistent problem across all participants that none of our small design changes were fixing. The designer had a bit of an epiphany after the 7th participant and came up with a pretty radicial different design. Therefore, I had to get the recruiters to grab me a few more participants so that we could have enough to test the major alternative design.

So I am finishing up this study tomorrow (by running six participants in one day!). I'll let the maybe one or two people interested in this know how it comes out. This past holiday weekend, I didn't too much. However, I spent most of MLK day doing some overdue cleaning that took almost half the day. So I am pretty wiped. Until next time folks. Have a swell day and peace.