Archive for the 'User Tests' Category
Cheese-colored Cheese? Insufferable!
June 12th, 2007Interesting article today in the New York Times about companies lobbying to sneak nonorganic ingredients into foods labeled organic. A good reminder that a company’s perception of the marketplace is just as important as the consumer’s perception of the product.
John Foraker, chief executive of Annie’s Homegrown, argued that nonorganic annatto was a crucial […]
Redesigning Earth.
June 10th, 2007One of the things we do as engineering psychologists is help predict the consequences of changes to existing systems, for example by creating Failure Modes and Effects Analyses (FMEA).
I thought I had pondered this kind of risk management on a very large scale until I heard NASA Administrator Michael Griffin’s comments about Global […]
Experiments are not valid.
May 29th, 2007Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so is experimental validity in the mind of the inferrer.*
If this sounds like nonsense, I heartily recommend the following lit review by Albright and Malloy.**
Albright, L., Malloy, T.E. (2000) Experimental validity: Brunswik, Campbell, Cronbach, and enduring issues. Review of General Psychology, Vol 4(4), Dec 2000. […]
Clever design = International intrigue
May 8th, 2007The Associated Press reported a story today that reminded me of the challenges one can face when introducing radically new designs to a naive user group.
A few years ago, the Canadian mint used a new technique to create a 25 cent coin featuring a red poppy inlay. The poppy flower is Canada’s symbol of Remembrance […]