UPA: Idea Market Recap
(Once i can switch to the new version of Blogger that's in beta, I will tag posts like this as self-promotion)
In June 2006, I attended the UPA conference in Broomfield, CO. It was a really high quality conference met some great folks, heard good talks, got to have some quality hanging out time with queen irene.
I conducted an Idea Market about analyzing results from usability studies. An idea market is when you facilitate a discussion with conference attendees about an area of interest and capture what the thoughts and themes are...kind of like a focus group almost but quicker and in an informal way.
This topic is of interest to me for several reasons.
1. I think there are several aspects of usability studies that are "black boxes" if you will. Meaning that a lot of times there are certain aspects of running studies that people don't talk about. One of those areas is what you do once you have ran the study and need to make sense of the data.
2. When I teach usability testing this is the area that students often struggle with...ok, i've run a very good test and have piles of data...now what. So I was looking to get a better sense of how to talk about this crucial step with my students. I know how I do it, but that doesn't seem like a very effective pedagolocial stanse.
3. I also think that our field (whatever that is including these days) often ignores or does not consult the rich literature in qualitative research methodology. Not saying everthing about usability studies are qualitative, but much is.
Anyway, the idea market yielded quite a lively and interesting discussion. As I suspected, it turned out that the ways in which practioners analyze their data runs the gamut from using formal approaches like software such as Atlas ti to super informal like just kind of eyeballing it or jotting down recommendations during thes tudy itself and never doing a formal analysis phase.
The summary from the idea market and is now up on the UPA website, check it out if you are interested or email me (ejrose at u-dot-washington-dot-edu) if you have additional thoughts about the topic.
In June 2006, I attended the UPA conference in Broomfield, CO. It was a really high quality conference met some great folks, heard good talks, got to have some quality hanging out time with queen irene.
I conducted an Idea Market about analyzing results from usability studies. An idea market is when you facilitate a discussion with conference attendees about an area of interest and capture what the thoughts and themes are...kind of like a focus group almost but quicker and in an informal way.
This topic is of interest to me for several reasons.
1. I think there are several aspects of usability studies that are "black boxes" if you will. Meaning that a lot of times there are certain aspects of running studies that people don't talk about. One of those areas is what you do once you have ran the study and need to make sense of the data.
2. When I teach usability testing this is the area that students often struggle with...ok, i've run a very good test and have piles of data...now what. So I was looking to get a better sense of how to talk about this crucial step with my students. I know how I do it, but that doesn't seem like a very effective pedagolocial stanse.
3. I also think that our field (whatever that is including these days) often ignores or does not consult the rich literature in qualitative research methodology. Not saying everthing about usability studies are qualitative, but much is.
Anyway, the idea market yielded quite a lively and interesting discussion. As I suspected, it turned out that the ways in which practioners analyze their data runs the gamut from using formal approaches like software such as Atlas ti to super informal like just kind of eyeballing it or jotting down recommendations during thes tudy itself and never doing a formal analysis phase.
The summary from the idea market and is now up on the UPA website, check it out if you are interested or email me (ejrose at u-dot-washington-dot-edu) if you have additional thoughts about the topic.
posted by Emma Rose @ 17:30
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