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ReferencesNavigation arrowAuthorsNavigation arrowPatrick J. O'Donnell
Jun 19

“ ... there are no simple 'right' answers for most web design questions (at least not for the important ones). What works is good, integrated design that fills a need--carefully thought out, well executed, and tested. ”

-- Steve Krug, Don't Make Me Think, p. 136

 
 

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Patrick J. O'Donnell

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Publications by Patrick J. O'Donnell (bibliography)

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1991
 
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O'Donnell, Patrick J., Scobie, Geoff and Baxter, Isobel (1991): The Use of Focus Groups as an Evaluation Technique in HCI. In: Diaper, Dan and Hammond, Nick (eds.) Proceedings of the Sixth Conference of the British Computer Society Human Computer Interaction Specialist Group - People and Computers VI August 20-23, 1991, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK. pp. 211-224.

“This study examines the focus group as an evaluation technique. Many of the methods used for user requirements capture and for evaluation of usability suffer from being individual based. This leads to serious concerns over the validity of techniques. It is noticeable that in the plethora of definitions of usability and in the variety of techniques (both 'objective' and subjective) pressed on the designer for employment during user requirements capture, prototype evaluation and field evaluation, the issues of reliability and validity are not often in focus. This paper addresses the question of construct validity as it affects specifically the focus group in HCI. A central heating control interface from Honeywell Control Systems was subjected to prototyped based evaluation using a range of different techniques including a focus group. 20 subjects operated a predesignated task scenario on an interface and had their performance videotaped. Indexes of performance were calculated, time for sub task completion and error rate. Subjective assessments by subjects of the performance were also taken as were a range of other measures. Subjects then took part in a moderated focus group. The discussion was content analysed and measures of satisfaction/dissatisfaction constructed. Measures derived from the task scenario were correlated with the focus group based measures. The scenario based measures predicted the focus group indexes especially the number of criticisms uttered. However some dimensions of subject evaluation were not predicted by the scenario measures. This implies that the construct validity of the focus group does not overlap completely with that of other evaluation techniques.”

© All rights reserved O'Donnell et al. and/or Cambridge University Press

 
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Jun 19

“ ... there are no simple 'right' answers for most web design questions (at least not for the important ones). What works is good, integrated design that fills a need--carefully thought out, well executed, and tested. ”

-- Steve Krug, Don't Make Me Think, p. 136

 
 

Featured chapter

Read the fascinating history of Wearable Computing, told by its father, Steve Mann

Read Steve's chapter !

 
 

Latest books

The Social Design of Technical Systems: Building technologies for communities
by Brian Whitworth and Adnan Ahmad

 
Start reading

The Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction, 2nd Ed.
by Mads Soegaard and Rikke Friis Dam

 
Start reading
 
 

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