[Sigia-l] User Groups for Research?

[Eva Kaniasty]

Jonathan,

I think this depends on your user base.  Does it consist of mostly new or
repeat visitors?  If it's mostly new, then the members of your user group
will quickly become unrepresentative of your actual users.  If you do have a
large group of repeat visits from expert users, then it might make more
sense.  In either case, the people in your user group will become biased by
virtue of being more involved with you and your company, which means that
you'll have to build in mechanisms for keeping your group fresh.   I would
also be careful about making decisions solely based on the opinion of your
user group, or using those group members repeatedly for user research.

If you are looking for feedback from your existing user base, you can also
design other systems for dialogue with your larger community of users...
email feedback that you actually analyze and respond to, forums, beta
testing programs, preview versions, and of course surveys.

-eva


On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 8:59 AM, Jonathan Baker-Bates <
jonathan at bakerbates.com> wrote:

> Seeing as nobody replied to my last post about in-page navigation
> (apart from Paola off list), maybe this will elicit something:
>
> Does anyone have any experience of setting up and managing a "user
> group" for the purposes of conducting trials of new features on web
> sites? That is, a group of people of whatever type (domain experts,
> laymen, whatever) who can be contacted for field trials, opinions etc.
> in order to inform design decisions?
>
> I have the capability and the budget to do traditional market research
> (which I tend to take which a bag a salt mostly); can also conduct A/B
> testing of designs on live sites (which can tell you a lot about some
> aspects of the design), and am able to conduct facilitated user
> research in labs (the mileage varies of course). However, I've always
> been curious about the effect of mixing "naive" users (eg market and
> user research fodder) with interested opinions from people who
> regularly use the system. Many of these people are in the organisation
> itself of course, but I think they're too close to the issues for my
> liking.
>
> Jonathan
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-- 
Eva Kaniasty
http://www.linkedin.com/in/kaniasty