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“Ah, OK. But what's your sample size?” you ask.
“Ah…well,” he stammers. “I just know everybody complains about it.”
“OK,” you reply good-naturedly. “Let's test it just to conirm.”
“Sure, go ahead; but it's probably a waste of time,” he mumbles over his shoul-
der, heading for the cashier.
You end up with 10 tasks for the test and 6 post-test Likert-style rating scales.
You're a little worried that it may be hard to it in that amount of activity in an hour,
but the pilot test runs beautifully, and you're ready to rock.
SIDEBAR: WITHIN = REPEATED
Note that in this scenario we are using a total of 10 people and each one of the 10 people is attempt-
ing to complete each one of the 10 tasks. This is a classic within-subject usability test setup; each
person provides data for each task, because each person is attempting to do all 10 tasks; we could
say that, “each person is repeated [here, 10 times].” This is why another name for “within-subject
designs” is “repeated-measures designs.”
The 2-day actual testing—ive participants per day—proceeds very well. But,
at the end of the tenth participant, you're really beat and can't really look at the
data.
The next day, you get to work analyzing the data. And of course, the irst thing
you do is tally the task completions as in
Table 5.1
.
The results are reassuring in some aspects and very problematic in other ways.
You're relieved to ind out that the basics of course management—inding and
registering for a course—were often easily completed by your test participants,
Table 5.1
Tasks and Number of Successful Completions
Successful
Completions (out
of 10 participants)
Task #
Verbatim Task
1
“During your annual review with your manager,
she described a course that she recently took
and enjoyed. She says it might be beneicial for
you too. It's a course called Managing, Commu-
nicating and Leading. Register for the course.”
9
2
“Determine who the training coordinator for the
course is.”
2
3
“You want to take a inancial management
course that meets in a physical classroom rather
than online. Look for a inancial management
class that meets in a physical classroom in Mon-
treal and sign up for the course.”
8
4
“Suddenly you feel like you're overextending
yourself. Drop Managing, Communicating, and
Leading.”
8
5
Get on the waiting list for “Business Analytics.”
6
Continued
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