Designing Scenarios and Tasks for User Trials of Home Electronic Devices
W. Green, Patrick W. Jordan · 1999
Essentially, user trials are simulations of product usage, in which subjects (who are not actual users) try to fulfil tasks (usually imposed by an experimenter) in an experimental setting by using a product or product simulation (e.g. prototype, mockup, sketches) (see Kanis and Vermeeren 1996). In a seminar discussion on usability evaluation in industry (Jordan, Thomas and McClelland 1996) the artificiality of laboratory environments and evaluation protocols was discussed. It was stated that: "Laboratories will often be free of the sorts of distractions that users will encounter when using a product in its real context of use and (that) evaluation scenarios often request users to perform tasks in isolation which, in reality, they might do whilst also undertaking other activities ... ". There was discussion of how scenarios could be used in order to find a balance between, on the one hand, control over the evaluation and, on the other hand, generating outcomes that say something about real-life product use. It was stated that: "It is (also) possible to generate a scenario through the way in which the tasks are set. For example, instead of simply setting users a sequence of tasks to do, it may be possible to develop a &s;story&s; , perhaps by asking participants to pretend that they are, say, secretaries working for a particular type of company and presenting the tasks as if they were problems that might arise during the working day". However, further on in the discussion, it was stated that: " ... it was considered to be highly questionable as to whether ecological validity can really be achieved this way". In this chapter we have a closer look at this problem. We focus on the problem of designing tasks for user trials.