Outliers in usability testing:: how to treat usability problems found for only one test participant?

Asbjørn Følstad; Effie Lai-Chong Law; Kasper Hornbæk

doi:10.1145/2399016.2399056

Outliers in usability testing: how to treat usability problems found for only one test participant?

Asbjørn Følstad, Effie Lai-Chong Law, Kasper Hornbæk

Department of Computer Science

7 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

In usability testing, usability problems are often found for only one test participant. The literature does not help in deciding whether such single-user problems should be accepted or rejected as usability problems. To help us understand how such decisions are made in practical usability testing, 89 practitioners described how they dealt with single-user problems in their latest usability test. Single-user problems was accepted, rejected, or reported as outliers. This decision depended on problem severity, participant profile, sample size, and judgments on whether the problem is an artifact of the test situation.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Proceedings of the 7th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction : making sense through design
Number of pages	4
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery
Publication date	2012
Pages	257-260
ISBN (Print)	978-1-4503-1482-4
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/2399016.2399056
Publication status	Published - 2012
Event	7th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Making Sense Through Design - Copenhagen, Denmark Duration: 14 Oct 2012 → 17 Oct 2012 Conference number: 7

Conference

Conference	7th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Making Sense Through Design
Number	7
Country/Territory	Denmark
City	Copenhagen
Period	14/10/2012 → 17/10/2012

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10.1145/2399016.2399056

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Outliers in usability testing: how to treat usability problems found for only one test participant? / Følstad, Asbjørn; Law, Effie Lai-Chong; Hornbæk, Kasper.

Proceedings of the 7th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: making sense through design. Association for Computing Machinery, 2012. p. 257-260.

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Article in proceedings › Research › peer-review

Følstad, A, Law, EL-C & Hornbæk, K 2012, Outliers in usability testing: how to treat usability problems found for only one test participant? in Proceedings of the 7th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: making sense through design. Association for Computing Machinery, pp. 257-260, 7th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Making Sense Through Design , Copenhagen, Denmark, 14/10/2012. https://doi.org/10.1145/2399016.2399056

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Outliers in usability testing: how to treat usability problems found for only one test participant?

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