George, Excellent points. I think we need more open discussion about research methodology and rigor in CHI and IA circles. I'm actually slated to present at an upcoming UPA-MN meeting on this kind of topic. I think too many people look to research to "prove" their own opinions or they use their Trivial Pursuit style knowledge of research as a way to flaunt their "expertise". If we really care about applicability of research, then we have to look under the covers at methodology and rigor. As you point out, you can't just look at what they DID research, but sometimes it important to think about what wasn't included or who wasn't talked to. Regards, Lyle Kantrovich User Experience Architect Cargill http://www.cargill.com Croc O' Lyle: commentary on usability, IA, and web design http://crocolyle.blogspot.com -----Original Message----- From: george.olsen@pobox.com [mailto:george.olsen@pobox.com] Sent: Wednesday, April 03, 2002 12:07 AM To: sigia-l@asis.org Subject: RE: SIGIA-L: quick request: page layouts At 10:06 PM -0700 4/2/02, Jess McMullin wrote: >goes against our precious intuition. That's ok, it went against my precious >intuition too - when I saw this in 1997 (From a UIE talk at SGML/XML 97 in >NY). I was so sure this was wrong I went and did a study on page layout with >54 first-year psych students. And gosh, intuition isn't always what we >should rely on, because UIE's point is right: OTOH, I'd also also treat this particular study with caution for two reasons: 1) It was written in 1996, based on research done earlier, so you're dealing with very early web design -- which was often poorly done, period. 2) UIE at that point wasn't real experienced with content issues -- since they'd come from software UI, where there just ain't a lot of content. The introduction to the report makes it painfully clear how inexperienced UIE was with content at that point. In summary, it said there was this new stuff called content on the web and no one had absolutely no idea how to present it effectively -- except maybe writers, graphic designers, film makers, etc., who UIE hadn't talked to. And many of the conclusions reached were pretty debateable to someone with a background in publication design. No the web isn't print, but that doesn't mean principles refined over centuries in publication design are automatically irrelevant. The main lesson I saw was that white space used badly produced bad results. Which any decent graphic designer could've told you. I don't mean to trash Jared or UIE because I think they've done an admirable job in learning about new areas beyond traditional software UI, including content -- in contrast to bad research I continue to see going on. But it does point out the need to know something of the researchers' background when looking at research. Since the early '90s I've seen a vast amount of bad CHI research because the researchers obviously didn't know the first thing about graphic design or content strategy principles and didn't seem particularly interested in talking to people who did. -- ______________________________________________________ George Olsen george@interactionbydesign.com User Experience Architect 310-993-0467 http://www.interactionbydesign.com