Some of my own research is really about trying to unpick that inner
experience of the interaction and there's some good material out there
in terms of people's experiences of interactive art installations,
partly because they're such subjective experiences. Although it is
harder with a social web site/utility/application/medium than a
physical installation, the Think Aloud technique works pretty well -
I'm sure many here might know of it from Lucy Suchman's work.
(If not, have a look here:
Suchman, L.A. and Trigg, R.H. Understanding Practice: Video as a
Medium for Reflection and Design. in Greenbaum, J. and Kyng, M. eds.
Design at Work: Cooperative Design of computer Systems, Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, New Jersey, 1991, 65-89
or here:
Anders Ericsson, K., Simon, Herbert A. 1993, Protocol Analysis: Verbal
Reports as Data, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. )
Getting people to self-report is often skewed because they only half-
remember what they did and invent the rest. Think aloud works by
filming the person interacting and then getting them to immediately
watch it back and describe what they're doing, so you end up with what
feels like a DVD commentary track. I've never tried this with someone
using a social space, but it might be an interesting experiment.
The other things to look out for, I feel, are desire lines. It's a lot
easier to spot what people are trying to do with an environment or
tool that exists that it is to try and predict into an unknown future.
It's very hard to predict the interaction between the influence of the
technology and the people using it (which is why computers make the
financial crises so much worse).
Best,
Andy
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Andy Polaine
Research | Writing | Strategy
Interaction Concept Design
Education Futures
Twitter: apolaine
Skype: apolaine
http://playpen.polaine.com
http://www.designersreviewofbooks.com
http://www.omnium.net.au
http://www.antirom.com
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