ASSESSMENT OF USER RATIONALITY AND ADAPTIVITY: A CASE STUDY
Effie Lai‐Chong Law, Borka Jerman-Blažič · 2004
ABSTRACT The paper presents the results of an empirical study on users’ behaviors when they were asked to perform a task and its variant in a usability test. Specific focus was set on assessing the users’ rationality and adaptivity. The system tested was a multilingual e-Learning platform. 7 German and 3 Slovenian users were employed. Video-recordings of the two isomorphic tasks were segmented and coded. Results show that the users were rational and adaptive. KEYWORDS Mental models, situated cognition, task variant, e-learning platform 1. INTRODUCTION The de facto definition of usability is based on the implicit assumption that users are rational agents, interacting with a system by using their knowledge and deriving information from the system’s reactions to achieve their specific goals. In recognizing the complementary functions of the traditional cognitive-rationalist paradigm (cf. physical symbol system; Newell & Simon, 1976) and the situated-constructivist approach (Greeno, Collins, & Resnick, 1996), we espouse the hybrid model that both situated and plan-based actions come into play when users interact with a system. In usability testing, which is one of the mostly applied methods for identifying usability problems of a system, test participants are usually required to perform specific tasks with the system for which they have incomplete or even erroneous concepts. We claim that these imperfect concepts can presumably be improved when users engage in achieving tasks with the system, given their ability to