Reading Response (week 2): Silverman's Chapter 1 & 2

I am a slow reader but I am glad to find that Silverman's preface and chapter 1 & 2 are worth reading slowly and staying up this late. After the reading, I looked back to the usability evolution proposal I wrote for the last term's Introduction to Doctorial Study class. What a mess! Here I want to share with you how a novice researcher makes mistakes.

The following paragraph is what I wrote in the “Methods and Instruments” section in my proposal:

"In order to counterbalance the weakness of each method, this study combines several different methodological approaches to assess different aspects of the site with usability criteria. The main phase (phase three) of the project focus on the user-centered evaluations consisting of questionnaire, formal usability testing, card sorting and card description, as well as a combined label intuitiveness and category membership expectation test. Before carrying out the user-centered evaluations, focus group meetings and a pilot study will be conducted in the phase two.”

In this study, I desire to use multiple methods because I want to get many different aspects of the studied target (i.e. the studied website). Some methods gather only quantitative data (e.g. questionnaire) while others gather only qualitative data (e.g. focus group). And the formal usability testing even contains both the two kinds of data because it involves observation, open-ended questions for comments, and Likert scale for satisfaction ranking. Too many methods increase the difficulty and complication of data gathering and analysis. It means that the researcher will have to learn many more data analysis skills. This research design is time consuming and neglects the original purpose which is to give re-design suggestions in the phase of testing. It means the more efficient way is needed.

I think one of the solutions is to break down this study into several small narrow-downed studies. One aspect of the website usability testing is focused at one time instead of desiring to cover all aspects of evaluation.