[IxDA Discuss] Do you change who you are for participants?

[Katie Albers]

At 9:37 PM -0800 11/5/07, margaret wrote:
>We ran a recent usability study and it was brought up in the post mortem
>that perhaps users would be more comfortable if they didn't know we were the
>designers. Not only 'more comfortable' and 'more honest' but also maybe less
>'eager to please.'
>
>Have you ever slightly altered who you are in order to obtain more honest
>data from your users? I'm not talking about lying, but maybe being slightly
>misleading or vague as to what your role is with the company.

This is the part that surprises me...why are you telling the users 
who you are at all? It helps to have your first name, to increase 
their comfort, but beyond that, you're just someone doing research to 
figure out whether the application being developed is any good -- and 
I phrase it just like that.

Katie
-- 

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Katie Albers
katie at firstthought.com