[IxDA Discuss] Asking questions to participants in a positive or negative way ?

[Katie Albers]

I just want to emphasize strongly that you have to be very careful in 
constructing questions so that you're asking what you think you're 
asking. What does that mean? Well, my newest favorite question is 
"When you finished your transaction did you believe that the sales 
person successfully imparted his knowledge to you?" [no, really, they 
asked that. It was so bizarre I actually wrote it down.] My first 
(and continuing) reaction was that I had been more knowledgeable than 
the salesperson was when we started, and I now felt like he had 
succeeded in deleting knowledge from my brain (though I still knew 
more than he did) and I wasn't sure whether that was a (7) Completely 
successful or a (1) Completely unsuccessful.

I make it a point when I have to construct surveys to submit the 
questions to a couple of the crankiest people I know in terms of 
language and willfully attributing meaning literally when you were 
thinking more figuratively and vice versa. Any question that does not 
survive that process I rewrite until it passes. Yes, I user test my 
user testing. sigh.

kt
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Katie Albers
User Experience Consulting & Project Management
katie at firstthought.com