[Sigia-l] Survey Advice

[Peter Merholz]

> The thing that really surprised me was the degree to which most of our
user
> population appeared either confused by or unaware of our navigation
> options--even as they were successfully using them.

One of the things that I've been seeing lately is that most folks really
don't distinguish between things like "search," "browse", and "navigation."
They're all part of the same set of stuff that "gets me to what I want."

And interesting story came from UIE, who has done heaps of user tests on
e-commerce sites. At the end of each test, they ask, "What did you think of
the search engine on this site?"

For Gap.com, people replied, "It was great! I found exactly what I wanted!"

Which is funny, because Gap.com doesn't have a search engine.

Tools like Endeca[1], and research such as that we've seen with Flamenco[2],
shows that the distinctions that we as developers and designers have
historically made are, by and large, meaningless to people trying to get
stuff done.

Which is why I would agree with the usability engineer when he encourages
you to ask questions not about features and functionality, but on how they
felt about completing a particular task.

[1] http://www.endeca.com/
[2] http://bailando.sims.berkeley.edu/flamenco.html

--peter