Category Archives: research

How many users for social design problems?

24 Apr 2010 – 20:01

I’ve been thinking a lot about research methods for social design problems. For example, how do you research what goes on on Facebook? How does Facebook do this currently? I believe they use metrics from their data team — which I do not believe really uncover social interaction design issues. How do you research how the unemployed [...]

By brynn | Also posted in sxd | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (2)

On why people ask questions on social networks

24 Apr 2010 – 19:05

Social search behavior is now generally agreed to be common enough that companies like Google are buying up companies like Aardvark, and academic researchers are asking good questions about the value of networks for question-answering (Q-A). I have done a bit of research in this area myself, and so I was quite pleased to read [...]

By brynn | Also posted in social search, sxd | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (1)

The Googling of the future that you do with your friends

17 Feb 2010 – 20:58

I don’t actually know what the title of this article is, but Google translate tells me that this: “Het Googlen van de toekomst doe je met je vrienden” translates to this: “The Googling of the future that you do with your friends”. If anyone out there speaks Dutch and wants to provide a translation for [...]

By brynn | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

User testing on Mechanical Turk [how-to]

11 Feb 2010 – 10:44

This is a pretty high-level summary (e.g., not that detailed) of how I create and run a new survey on Mechanical Turk. Since people have lots of different ways of using Mechanical Turk, this how-to may or may not be for you. I’ve also noticed that nearly every survey or questionnaire I put on Mechanical [...]

By brynn | Tagged , , , | Comments (8)

How Usability Studies are Like a French Meal [Comic]

8 Feb 2010 – 10:24

It occurred to me the other day that usability studies were like a fine, french meal when I decided to insert a mini-task within a longer user study. This mini-task reminded me of the “amuse-bouche” in french meals, like the bite of sorbet or other spoonful of citrus goodiness to cleanse the palate. After that, [...]

By brynn | Also posted in comics, personal | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)