[IxDA Discuss] Changes to Facebook (Perceived Privacy)

[Susan Farrell]

Susan said:
>>the problem has to do with several factors that might not have been
>>uncovered by traditional user testing with a small number of
>>representative users.
[...]
>>Maybe if FB had turned on the new features for a volunteer group of
>>user accounts and asked people to check them out and give feedback,
>>they would not have lost so much trust and could have modified the
>>feature rollout to be more palatable.


>At 8:15 AM -0400 9/9/06, Mark Schraad wrote:
>I agree. But this seems contrary to your point in paragraph one.

To clarify:

By traditional user testing I meant: recruit a dozen or so 
representative users, sit them down in front of prototyped features 
and have them do tasks and give feedback.

What I proposed as a better alternative in a case like FB is a lot 
more like beta testing. Take a few volunteer actual users and their 
real accounts (instead of the prototype), and invite the entire user 
base to tour the features in situ and give feedback (instead of 
evaluating with only a small sample of representative users).

Your point about the designers sometimes being right in the end 
(features eventually get accepted) is true enough, but if change is 
managed carefully, it's not always necessary to go through the PR 
disaster stage to get there. Unfortunately human beings seem to be 
change-averse on the whole, which means even good changes can be met 
with strong resistance -- especially when the change seems to be 
mandatory and seems to originate from outside the group. Involving 
users in the design change process can help a lot in reducing that 
resistance.

Susan