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Dual Verbal Elicitation: The Complementary use of Concurrent and Retrospective Reporting Within a Usability Test

McDonald, Sharon, Zhao, T and Edwards, Helen (2013) Dual Verbal Elicitation: The Complementary use of Concurrent and Retrospective Reporting Within a Usability Test. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction. ISSN 1044-7318

Item Type: Article

Abstract

Verbal protocols are the primary tool for understanding users' task-solving behaviours during usability testing. We describe a qualitative study that examined the utility of combining a concurrent and retrospective think-aloud within the same usability test. The results indicate that while there was significant overlap between the types of utterances produced during each think-aloud, the retrospective phase produced more verbalizations that were relevant to usability analysis. For example, helpful self-assessments of performance, yielding insights into the impact of encountered difficulties. However, a small number of less desirable utterance types emerged: hypothesising, rationalising and forgetting. When used together, both methods contributed to our understanding of usability issues; the concurrent phase yielded more usability issues overall, the retrospective data improved our understanding of these by: (i) reinforcement: users highlighted the impact of an issue on their experience; (ii) elaboration: users would provide causal explanations of encountered difficulties; (iii) context: users provided information about the product's context of use.

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More Information

Depositing User: Glenda Young

Identifiers

Item ID: 3435
Identification Number: https://doi.org/10.1080/10447318.2012.758529
ISSN: 1044-7318
URI: http://sure.sunderland.ac.uk/id/eprint/3435
Official URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1044731...

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Catalogue record

Date Deposited: 31 Jan 2013 11:37
Last Modified: 18 Dec 2019 15:35

Contributors

Author: Sharon McDonald
Author: T Zhao
Author: Helen Edwards

University Divisions

Faculty of Technology
Faculty of Technology > School of Computer Science
Faculty of Technology > FOT Executive

Subjects

Computing > Human-Computer Interaction

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