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Look Who's Talking: Evaluating the Utility of Interventions During an Interactive Think-Aloud

McDonald, Sharon, Zhao, Tingting and Edwards, Helen (2016) Look Who's Talking: Evaluating the Utility of Interventions During an Interactive Think-Aloud. Interacting with Computers, 28 (3). pp. 387-403. ISSN 0953-5438

Item Type: Article

Abstract

We report the results of a study comparing two concurrent think-aloud approaches for usability testing: the classic think-aloud (CTA) and an interactive think-aloud (ITA). The think-alouds were compared in respect of task performance and usability problem data. We also analyse the utility of the interventions used within the ITA in eliciting useful participant utterances. The most useful interventions were those focused on seeking explanations and opinions; these generated more utterances about user difficulties. Requests for clarifications, particularly about actions, resulted in fewer useful utterances: participants responded with simple procedural descriptions. In comparing the CTA and ITA, we found no differences in the number of successfully completed tasks, but the ITA did elongate the test session. The ITA led to the detection of more usability problems overall, and a greater number of causal explanations. However, the ITA produced more low-severity problems than the CTA.

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More Information

Depositing User: Paula Normington

Identifiers

Item ID: 5620
Identification Number: https://doi.org/10.1093/iwc/iwv014
ISSN: 0953-5438
URI: http://sure.sunderland.ac.uk/id/eprint/5620
Official URL: http://iwc.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2015/0...

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Catalogue record

Date Deposited: 22 Oct 2015 10:35
Last Modified: 28 Jan 2021 16:26

Contributors

Author: Sharon McDonald
Author: Tingting Zhao
Author: Helen Edwards

University Divisions

Faculty of Technology
Faculty of Technology > FOT Executive

Subjects

Computing

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