Complexities Of Usability Testing  

Usability testing has proven itself in improving product usability, but actually planning, doing testing, and interpreting results are not always straightforward. Interpretation of the results of usability testing, changes to improves usability, and general inferences to be drawn from specific tests are extremely difficult to make with accuracy. After working through the practicalities and politics of usability testing itself you must then draw conclusions and support them People who have done a lot of testing will find these problems familiar.

Ridgway, Lenore S. STC Proceedings (1994). Presentations>Usability>Methods>Testing

Effects of Documentation Errors on User Perception of Interactive Programs: The Experimental Design  

It would be useful to determine how much effect errors in product documentation have on users, if the errors do not seriously interfere with product use. In an effort to start collecting information on this issue, we designed an experiment to explore the reactions of users to a simple interactive program with flawed documentation. We hypothesized that product quality would be judged in part by the quality of the documentation, if the errors in the documentation interfered with task performance. We also hypothesized that some but not all users would be sensitive to documentation errors and would downgrade their rating of the program and the documentation based on these errors. Our experimental design is described in this paper.

Ridgway, Lenore S. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Documentation>Usability

The Gentle Art of Questionnaire Design  

It is important for us to gain knowledge about our audiences before we start developing our information packages. It is equally important for us to get feedback after we have produced our information so that we know how well it was received by our audiences.

Ridgway, Lenore S. and Roger A. Grice. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Research>Methods>Surveys