Research output per year
Research output per year
Maaike J. Van Den Haak*, Menno D. T. De Jong, Peter Jan Schellens
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article › Academic › peer-review
Think-aloud protocols are a dominant method in usability testing. There is, however, only little empirical evidence on the actual validity of the method. This paper describes an experiment that compares concurrent and retrospective think-aloud protocols for a usability test of an online library catalogue. There were three points of comparison: usability problems detected, overall task performance, and participant experiences. Results show that concurrent and retrospective think-aloud protocols reveal comparable sets of usability problems, but that these problems come to light in different ways. In retrospective think-aloud protocols, more problems were detected by means of verbalisation, while in concurrent think-aloud protocols, more problems were detected by means of observation. Moreover, in the concurrent think-aloud protocols, the requirement to think aloud while working had a negative effect on the task performance. This raises questions about the reactivity of concurrent think-aloud protocols, especially in the case of high task complexity.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 339-351 |
Number of pages | 13 |
Journal | Behaviour and Information Technology |
Volume | 22 |
Issue number | 5 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Sep 2003 |
Research output: PhD Thesis › PhD-Thesis – Research and graduation external