This is a very good issue Jens. One of the issues that happens everyday is that someone on a product team will refer to poor usability, but not highlight what the comparison is for this judgment -- is it poor relative to the last version, user expectations, the vice president's opinion, the major competitor..... In addition to the object of comparison, there is also the common failure to clearly express dimension of usability or user experience the comparison deals with (learnability versus expert use/efficiency). So you could have a dual problem where the object of comparison is not clear and the dimension of interest is not explicit.
There is a book that deals with missing or inappropriate comparisons in a book from 2001 (Chapter 4) that highlights the issue you wrote about: Best, J. (2001). Damned lies and statistic. Bekeley, CA, University of California Press. The book makes the point that it is hard to understand or interpret lone statistics or implicit comparisons. There are few books out like this one that highlight this problem in media and scientific reports. I routinely ask the questions "What is the goal of this (meeting, project, brainstorming session...)?, but you bring up the point that when a person makes a comparative statement, that we should ask what the object of comparison is. Another twist on this issue would involve some of the cognitive biases that can affect how we perceive data. Some of the work by Kahneman and Tversky and others about common, but powerful cognitive biases like the "availability heuristic" where people judge the liklihood of things by their vividness (which overrides baseline statistical information) and the law of small numbers. Very good point and nice article. Chauncey On Fri, Jul 4, 2008 at 4:48 AM, Jens Meiert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Feeling free to blatantly point to my own take on "Compared to What?," > <http://meiert.com/en/blog/20080703/compared-to-what/>. I understand > this concept's root in information design, but worry about the > supposed fact that not only many "designs", but rather news sources > fail in answering that question. While in turn, few people ask it > (which still reminds me of the situation that some people, users, > blame themselves for bad design/usability). > > Curious about your thoughts. > > -- > Jens Meiert > http://meiert.com/en/ > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
