I'm a horrible liar (ask anyone who has ever bought a car or house from me), but I have omitted details from users during a test, if I had a hand in the design or development process. I prefer to avoid the situation altogether, but have had to do it in the past. I find it best to be very neutral and somewhat vague about the backend build process, but refer to the group as a nameless body of people who are extremely interested in making the system work better for whoever is using the application.
I don't consider this "changing who I am", since there are tons of things I don't tell people when I'm doing user research (I have a dog and 2 cats, both of which are irrelevant). Whether I helped in the design is irrelevant to the test participant, and to the research task at hand. As long as I can be objective about it, it doesn't typically come up. I have seen (and accidentally instigated, once or twice) cases where separating yourself from the design process for the participant has the opposite effect, wherein you get into an "us vs them" situation and you get too much negative bias - basically the participant starts railing against "techies" in order to please you. There's something a little surreal about a convo where you wind up talking about yourself in the third person - "Well the designer had good intentions, now let's get back to this task..." Bryan http://www.bryanminihan.com -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of margaret Sent: Tuesday, November 06, 2007 12:37 AM To: 'IxDA Discuss' Subject: [IxDA Discuss] Do you change who you are for participants? We ran a recent usability study and it was brought up in the post mortem that perhaps users would be more comfortable if they didn't know we were the designers. Not only 'more comfortable' and 'more honest' but also maybe less 'eager to please.' Have you ever slightly altered who you are in order to obtain more honest data from your users? I'm not talking about lying, but maybe being slightly misleading or vague as to what your role is with the company. Did you feel it was successful? Or do you think this is a pointless tactic? Thanks, Margaret ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://gamma.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://gamma.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://gamma.ixda.org/help ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://gamma.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://gamma.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://gamma.ixda.org/help
