[Sigia-l] ROI/Value of Search Engine Design - Resources?

[Jared M. Spool]

> > Sure, 'laptops' works as a query. It didn't work for our user
> > because they didn't get what they needed.
>
>As my above reply indicated, just because some people did a search and
>not getting what they needed is NOT necessary a problem of the search
>engine or the site. It could very well be a problem of the users.

Maybe at this point we can agree to disagree. I have drawn my inferences 
from our data, you can draw different inferences. That's how it's supposed 
to work.

I come from a school that there isn't ever a problem with users -- it's 
always a problem with the design. I believe that there is no such thing as 
'user error' -- I believe that there always is a design that could've 
prevented such errors and it's part of our research agenda to understand 
what such a design would entail.

If you believe that the problem was that our user was somehow incapable of 
or shouldn't be using Amazon, I can accept that. I have a different opinion.

It is possible that the user selection process we use in our research is 
finding the wrong users. It is possible that the tasks we've asked users to 
perform are the wrong tasks. It is possible that our test method and our 
measurement techniques are somehow faulty. I question each of these things 
regularly and we're constantly making improvements.

But, in this case, to the best of my knowledge and our research abilities, 
I believe this user was the right user and their behavior was indicative of 
what we often see when trying to perform similar tasks.

As we do more testing, we'll have more results, from which we'll draw more 
inferences and opinions. We'll continue to present the data so that 
everyone can draw their own inferences and opinions. Then we'll have more 
healthy debate, which will help us refine our research and move our 
knowledge forward. That's how it is supposed to work.

Thanks for encouraging our behavior.

Jared


Jared M. Spool
User Interface Engineering
http://www.uie.com    jspool at uie.com

Don't miss User Interface 7 West, March 23-27, Burlingame, CA. 
http://www.uiconf.com