[Sigia-l] People as scanners, browsers, scowsers and searchers

[Jonathan Baker-Bates]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: sigia-l-bounces at asis.org 
> [mailto:sigia-l-bounces at asis.org] On Behalf Of Mark Richman
> Sent: 05 July 2005 15:56
> To: sigia-l at asis.org
> Subject: [Sigia-l] People as scanners, browsers, scowsers and 
> searchers
> 
<snip>
> What I didn't expect to find was what I called combination 
> users, or "scowsers". These people used the categories and 
> headings but read several links beneath each heading as well. 
> I think they were using this info to clarify their idea of 
> what was beneath the heading (headings were not always 
> perfectly clear), but they could have been doing this for 
> other reasons as well. I'm sure other IAs have noticed this. 
> What do you make of it?
> 

I've noticed it, but I wouldn't think it's very significant - some
people in user tests will tend to be more cautious/thorough when
performing tasks (I assume you gave them a task) than they would be
otherwise. They don't want to "do it wrong" or whatever, so you'll see
this kind of confirmation activity happening sometimes. Of course, it
may also have been that the headings chosen weren't fitting into their
mental model of the information, so they had to check the contents
further down, which would be an information architecture issue rather
than a "persona" thing. Either way, users doing something unexpected on
a test is always a cue for some gentle probing as to why they're doing
it. 

Jonathan

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