RECORD

User-centred evaluation

November 10, 2007 on 10:16 pm | By Asbjørn | In All categories, User-centred evaluation | 1 Comment

User-centred evaluation of online communities is one of the three main areas of RECORD.

Motivation: User-centred evaluation of online communities is challenging. Interaction with an online community involves using and sharing content created by the community members themselves, getting engaged in dialogues and discussions, as well as getting to know new people and keeping contact with friends. We know that the most common motivations for using online communities are entertainment and socializing (Brandtzæg and Heim 2007).

This context of use in online communities implies the user interaction to be characterized by fuzzy tasks and goals, something that makes task-oriented evaluation – as typically is used for example in user testing – insufficient. We need evaluation methods that are able to collect valid data on the full possible user experience of online communities. We hope that the research on user-centred evaluation in the RECORD project will bring us closer to having such methods.

Users as evaluators: The most used user-centred evaluation methods is user testing. In this method we identify usability problems through observation of users. In RECORD, instead of observing users we aim to invite the users to engage themselves as evaluators. After all, online communities is all about leaving the discussions to the users – and quite possibly engaging users in discussions and reflections on issues of design, usability and user experience will broaden our insight in users’ needs and wants for online community services.

Evaluation methods: The RECORD evaluation methods that we aim to adapted and develop include:

• Expert evaluations where end-users are used as evaluators
• Community discussions on concepts and prototypes
• Community reflection on evaluation results – engaging the users as analysts, not just data provider

Our current focus is on expert evaluations were end-users are engaged as evaluators. We will keep you posted on the RECORD blogg regarding the progress of evaluation method trial and development. Stay tuned.