On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 11:58 PM, Brian <brian.min...@colorado.edu> wrote: > Quite frankly the advice that you should only use five subjects makes no > sense. The appeal to Nielsen's authority is not going to work on me or > anyone else who understands why the scientific method exists.
Experience shows that most people end up being very similar when it comes to usability. Most problems show up repeatedly even with groups of five people. If you run the tests on a hundred people, you're going to get a somewhat more accurate picture, but not enough to justify the extra expense. It's much better to run a five-person study, assume that any objections raised by (say) at least three are representative, fix those, and run another few five-person studies on the fixed software for the same cost. You don't need large sample sizes if something is regular enough. You only need high sample sizes if the object of your study is variable enough to require it. That's usually the case in pharmacological studies, for instance, but that doesn't mean it's true everywhere. If you have a tiny standard deviation, then a study of five people could provide very clear conclusions. It all depends on your data. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
