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I have reviewed the research literature in professional journals, conference
proceedings, technical reports, usability test reports and books for most
of my career. Each year I repeat the review process, and try to organize
the relevant research into a meaningful 3-day presentation for practitioners
(the Annual User Interface Update).
There are about 1,000 usability-related articles published each year.
My guess is that less than 5% ever have any practical, long-term value
to most usability practitioners. In some cases, the topics being studied
are of little interest to practitioners. In many cases the research results
are simply too hard for practitioners to find.
I have two questions to ask, one to researchers and one to practitioners.
I do not think the answer to either question is obvious.
To researchers: If you conducted a series of studies that
helped to answer a critical, important usability question, and you wanted
to publish so that the largest number of practitioners (not just other
researchers) would read your article, where would you publish?
To usability practitioners: If you seriously needed to
find a recent research article on a particular topic, where would you
look?
To demonstrate how difficult it can be for practitioners to find recent
research results, assume that you know of an article, where it was published,
and you wanted to read it. This is a far easier task than trying to find
any article, or all articles, on a particular topic.
To be more concrete, assume that you want to quickly find and read an
article that you know was authored by Melody Ivory and Marti Hearst and
was published in the most current CHI Conference Proceedings. According
to the CHI Web site, "The annual CHI conference is the leading international
forum for the exchange of ideas and information about human-computer interaction
(HCI)."
To make matters even easier, assume that you already have an ACM identification
number, a Web account number, and a password. Many practitioners may not
have these numbers. The steps for accessing the CHI article are as follows:
- Enter the URL: acm.org (shows the home page)
- Click: Special Interest Groups (shows a new page)
- Click: Conference Proceedings (shows a new page)
- Click: List of Proceedings available on ACM's Digital Library (shows
a new page)
- Click: Inside the search box (shows a dialog box that says "Search
is a Controlled Feature," and requests your Web account number
and password)
- Click: "Cancel" (the dialog box disappears)
- Click: Proceedings (shows a new page)
- Click: CHI-Conference on Human Factors and Computing Systems (from
a list of 166 items spread over 6 screenfuls)
- Click: 2002
- Click: Inside the search box to set the cursor, and enter the term:
"Ivory" (shows the title: Website analysis: Statistical profiles
of highly-rated Web sites)
- Click: On the title (shows the abstract and references, plus a small
inactive pdf icon)
- Click: On "Click here to gain access to the Full Text" (shows
a dialog box that says "Full Text
is a Controlled Feature," and requests your Web account number
and password)
- Enter your Web account number and password (shows the abstract and
references again, plus a small active pdf
icon)
- Click: On the pdf icon (shows: The full paper in pdf format)
To access this paper, you needed to accurately find and click on 12 links,
enter the correct URL, your Web account number, your password and a search
term (a total of 31 keystrokes), and do considerable scrolling on certain
pages. Will most practitioners take the time to do this?
Barbara Chaparro is the editor of Usability News. This is a free Web
newsletter that is produced by the Software Usability Research Laboratory
(SURL) at Wichita State University. Her group uses the newsletter to report
on their research. To access one of their articles, you must:
- Enter the URL
- Click on the desired article title
Of course, she only has to deal with 10 full articles each quarter (about
40 per year), whereas the people at CHI have to deal with about 60 usability-related
articles each year.
Finding research-based usability information can be difficult for all
of us. Recently, I contacted two major local universities to see if they
would provide me access to their digital libraries. They both agreed to
do so as long as I came to the university and used their computers and
printers. Earlier this week, I found the abstract for an article that
interested me in the journal, Behaviour and Technology.
I had no other choice, but to purchase it online for $22. The article
may or may not contain the information for which I am looking. They are
sending me a paper copy by snail mail.
If practitioners are to make the best research-based decisions, they
must have timely access to the research. The research that addresses and
answers the most difficult design questions should be the research that
has the most impact on those design decisions. However, I suspect that
the research findings that are the easiest to find,
eventually will have the greatest impact on design decisions. Maybe usability
researchers and their publishers need to make some serious changes in
how they report their findings, so that they are more readily available
to practitioners.
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