In article <cja### [at] netplexaussieorg> , 
Christopher James Huff <cja### [at] earthlinknet>  wrote:

>> No, it just shows that you don't know how usability is tested.  And the
>> location does matter at all for a usability study (well, it would if the
>> locations where seriously different in setup, i.e. one indoors and one
>> outdoors during a snowstorm for example).
>
> It appears you know little about setting up experiments. You need to
> eliminate as many extraneous variables as possible, geographic location
> could make a big difference, and this sample size is pretty small. This
> study could easily have shown Windows had the best interface.

It has been shown, and is commonly agreed upon in literature about the
topic, that 8-10 users are sufficient for over 95% accuracy, and you reach
over 99.9% when exceeding 20 users.  You can calculate it yourself at
<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000319.html>.  And before you now start to
dispute that finding, please note that it has been peer-reviewed and
presented on the annual HCI ACM conference a decade ago.  So please don't
argue about something you obviously don't know anything about.  Only argue
after you actually informed yourself about the topic, that really helps, and
I am sure that is what they teach you at university as well.

Alternatively, as a starting point, see if you find this book in your
university library (unlikely if you don't have a psychology department
though):  <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0125184069/>

>> The speed of the browser has absolutely nothing to do with this.  Nobody
>> measures speed differences of rendering pages in sub-second times.  It is
>> only relevant that the pages render in one to two seconds (more isn't
>> possible over intranets these days).
>
> And the sub-second time it takes to access a menu does? And the
> milliseconds difference between fixed and slightly moving menus? It
> takes me far longer to find an item in a menu than to find the menu
> itself, and I spend very little time doing that.

If you (could) look at the videos you (would) notice something strange: On
Mac OS 9, users move straight to the menu.  In Mac OS X, they move until
about 50 pixels below the menu, then stop for a second or two before they
move on.  And there was also constant confusion when switching windows
together with menus.  Users had problems figuring out which window belonged
to what kind of menu and such.  I simply cannot go into more detail or put
up the video somewhere because I do not have the rights to do so.  In fact I
would love to get somebody to look into this further, and with the OS being
the actual focus, but that isn't my decision (to pay for) either.

    Thorsten

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

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