Account manager Within large corporations an account manager is often someone who is devoted to managing a customer’s relationship with their company. For example, if IXG Corporation is a large customer of TravelSmart.com, an account manager would be responsible for ensuring that that IXG Corporation is satisfied with the services they are receiving from TravelSmart.com and determining whether they require further services.

Acknowledgment tokens Words like “oh,” “ah,” “mm hm,” “uh huh,” “OK,” and “yeah” that carry no content. They reassure participants that you hear them, understand what is being said, and want them to continue.

Acquiescence In this context, acquiescence means to easily give in to what the experimenter (or group) suggests, despite one’s own true feelings. This often happens because a participant wants to please the experimenter (or group).

Affinity diagram Similar findings or concepts are grouped together to identify themes or trends in the data.

Anti-user Someone who would not buy or use your product in any circumstances.

Artifacts Objects or items that users use to complete their tasks or that result from their tasks.

Brainstorming A technique by which a group attempts to find a solution for a specific problem or generate ideas about a topic by amassing all the ideas together without initial concern of their true worth.

Cache Location where information is stored temporarily. The files you request are stored on your computer’s hard disk in a cache subdirectory under the directory for your browser. When you return to a page you’ve recently visited, the browser can retrieve the page from the cache rather than the original server. This saves you time and the network the burden of some additional traffic.

CDA See Confidential disclosure agreement.

Click stream Sequence of pages requested as a visitor explores a website.

Closed-ended question A question that provides a limited set of responses for participants to choose from (e.g., yes/no, agree/disagree, answer a/b).

Cognitive interference The ability of one idea to interfere with another’s ability to generate ideas.

Cognitive interview testing This involves asking the target population to describe all the thoughts, feelings, and ideas that come to mind when examining specific questions or messages, and to provide suggestions to clarify wording as needed.

Color-blind Congenital defect in vision that prevents an individual from distinguishing two or more colors that people without the defect can distinguish easily. Total color blindness (achromatopsia and monochromacy) is quite rare. Red/green dichromats (those who confuse red and green wavelengths) are more common. About 1 in 15 males and 1 in 100 females have some type of color vision defect.

Communication speed Whether one is speaking, writing, or typing, one can communicate an idea only as fast as he/she can speak, write, or type.

Confidential disclosure agreement (CDA)—A legal agreement, which the participant signs and thereby agrees to keep all information regarding the product and/or session confidential for a predefined time.

Consent form A document that informs a participant of the purpose of the activity he/she is involved in, the expected duration, procedures, use of information collected (e.g., to design a new product), incentives for participation, and his/her rights as a participant. The participant signs this form to acknowledge that he/she has been informed of these things and agrees to participate.

Convenience sampling The sample of the population used reflects those who were available (or those that you had access to), as opposed to selecting a truly representative sample of the population. Rather than selecting participants from the population at large, you recruited participants from a convenient subset of the population. For example, research done by college professors often uses college students for participants instead of representatives from the population at large.

Dendrogram A visual representation of a cluster analysis. Consists of many U-shaped lines connecting objects in a hierarchical tree. The height of each U represents the distance between the two objects being connected. The greater the distance, the less related the two objects are.

Double-barreled questions A single question that addresses more than one issue at a time.

Double negatives The presence of two negatives in a sentence, making it difficult for the participant to understand the true meaning of the question.

Evaluation apprehension The fear of being evaluated by others. Individuals with evaluation apprehension may not perform a specific task or speak truthfully for fear of another’s negative opinion. The larger the group, the larger the affect.

Feature-creep The tendency for developers to add more and more features into a product as time goes by without clear need or purpose for them.

Feature-shedding The tendency for developers to remove features from a product because of time constraints, limited resources, or business requirements.

Firewall Computer software that prevents unauthorized access to private data on your computer or a network by outside computer users.

Free-listing Participants write down every word or phrase that comes to their mind in association with a particular topic, domain, etc.

Gap analysis A competitive analysis technique in which your product/service is compared against a competitor’s to determine gaps in functionality. A value of “importance” and “satisfaction” is assigned to each function by end users. A single score is then determined for each function by subtracting the satisfaction from importance. This score is used to help determine whether resources should be spent incorporating each feature into the product.

Groupthink Within group decision-making procedures, it is the tendency for the various members of a group to try to achieve group consensus. The need for agreement takes priority over the motivation to obtain accurate knowledge to make appropriate decisions.

Hawthorne effect Participants may behave differently when observed. They will likely be on their best behavior (e.g., observing standard operating procedures rather than using their usual shortcuts).

Heuristic A rule or guide based on the principles of usability.

Hits The number of times a particular web page is visited.

Incident diary Participants are provided with a notebook containing worksheets to be completed on their own. The worksheets may ask users to describe a problem or issue they encountered, how they solved it (if they did), and how troublesome it was (e.g., via a Likert scale.). They are given to users to keep track of issues they encounter while using a product.

Information architecture The organization of a product’s structure and content, the labeling and categorizing of information, and the design of navigation and search systems. A good architecture helps users find information and accomplish their tasks.

Internet protocol (IP)—This is the method or protocol by which data are sent from one computer to another on the Internet.

Internet service provider (ISP)—A company that provides individuals or companies access to the Internet and other related services. Some of the largest ISPs include AT&T WorldNet, IBM Global Network, MCI, Netcom, UUNet, and PSINet.

IP address Every computer connected to the Internet is assigned a unique number known as an Internet protocol (IP) address. Since these numbers are usually assigned in country-based blocks, an IP address can often be used to identify the country from which a computer is connecting to the Internet.

Inter-rater reliability The degree to which two or more observers assign the same rating or label to a behavior. In field studies, it would be the amount of agreement between observers coding the same user’s behavior. High inter-rater reliability means that different observers coded the data in the same way.

Interviewer prestige bias The interviewer informs participants that an authority figure feels one way or another about a topic and then asks the participant how he/she feels.

Leading questions Questions that assume the answer and may pass judgment on the participant. They have the ability to influence a participant’s answers.

Likert scale A scale developed by Rensis Likert to measure attitudes. Participants are given a statement and five to seven levels along a scale to rate their agreement/disagreement, satisfaction/dissatisfaction, etc., with the statement.

Loaded questions Questions that typically provide a “reason” for a problem listed in the question. This frequently happens in political campaigns to demonstrate that a majority of the population feels one way or another on a key issue.

Log files When a file is retrieved from a website, server software keeps a record of it. The server stores this information in the form of text files. The information contained in a log file varies but can be programmed to capture more or less information.

Longitudinal study Research carried out on the same participants over an extended period.

Markers Key events to the participant that you can probe into for richer information.

Median A measure of central tendency. When data points are ordered by magnitude, the median is the middlemost point in the distribution.

Mental model A person’s mental representation or organization of information.

Negative user See Anti-user.

Non-responder bias People who do not respond to surveys (or participate in studies) can be significantly different from those who do. Consequently, missing the data from non-responders can bias the data you collect, making your data less generalizable.

Observation guide A list of general concerns or issues to guide your observations in a field study – but it is not a list of specific questions to ask.

Open-ended question A question designed to elicit detailed responses and free from structure (i.e., you do not provide options for the participant to choose from).

Outlier A data point that has an extreme value and does not follow the characteristics of the data in general.

Persona An exemplar of a particular user type designed to bring the user profile to life during product development.

Prestige response bias The participant wants to impress the facilitator and therefore provides answers that enhance his/her image.

Primary users Those individuals who work regularly or directly with the product.

Procedural knowledge Stored information that consists of knowledge of how to do things.

Production blocking In verbal brainstorming, people are asked to speak one at a time. By having to wait in a queue to speak, ideas are sometimes lost or suppressed. Attention is also shifted from listening to other speakers towards trying to remember one’s own idea.

Protocol A script that outlines all procedures you will perform as a moderator and the order in which you will carry out these procedures. It acts as a checklist for all of the session steps.

Proxy Server that acts as a mediator between a user’s computer and the Internet so that a company can ensure security, administrative control, and caching service.

Qualitative data Represents verbal or narrative pieces of data. These types of data are collected through focus groups, interviews, opened-ended questionnaire items, and other less structured situations.

Quantitative data Numeric information that includes things like personal income, amount of time, or a rating of an opinion on a scale from 1 to 5. Even things that you do not think of as quantitative, like feelings, can be collected using numbers if you create scales to measure them.

Reliable/reliability Reliability is the extent to which the test or measurement yields the same approximate results when used repeatedly under the same conditions.

Response bias In any study in which responses of some sort (e.g., answers to set questions) are required of participants, response bias exists if, independently of the effect of any experimental manipulation, the participants are more likely to respond in one way than in another (e.g., more likely, in a multiple-choice task, to choose Option A than Option B).

Sample A portion of the population selected to be representative of the population as a whole. Since it is typically unfeasible to collect data from the entire population of users, you must select a smaller subset.

Sampling bias The tendency of a sample to exclude some members of the sampling population and over-represent others.

Sampling plan A list of days/times to observe users. This should include days/times when you anticipate key events (e.g., the day before Thanksgiving, or bad weather at an airport), as well as “normal” days.

Scenario A story about a user. It provides a setting, has actors, objectives or goals, a sequence of events, and closes with a result. It is used to illustrate how an end user works or behaves.

Secondary users They would utilize the product infrequently or through an intermediary.

Self-selection bias Bias that results because a certain type of person has volunteered or “self-selected” to be a part of your study (e.g., those people who have a special interest in the topic, those who really just want your incentive, those who have a lot of spare time on their hands, etc.). If those who volunteered differ from those who did not, there will be bias in your sample.

Semi-structured interview The interviewer may begin with a set of questions to answer (closed- and open-ended) but deviate from that set of questions from time to time. It does not have quite the same conversational approach as an unstructured interview.

Significant event A specific experience in a participant’s past that either exemplifies specific experiences or that is particularly noteworthy.

Simplification bias If the researcher is a novice to the domain, he/she may have a tendency to conceptually simplify the expert user’s problemsolving strategies while observing the expert. This is not done intentionally, of course, but the researcher does not have the complex mental model of the expert.

Social desirability Participants provide a response to your questions that they believe are more socially desirable or acceptable than the truth.

Social loafing The tendency for individuals to reduce the effort that they make toward some task when working together with others. The larger the group, the larger the affect.

Stakeholder(s) An individual or group with an interest (or stake) in your user requirements activity and its results. Stakeholders typically influence the direction of the product (e.g., product managers, developers, business analysts, etc.).

Statistically significant The probability that the results you obtained were unlikely to have occurred by chance.

Storyboards Illustrate a particular task or a “day-in-life” of the user using representative images to illustrate a task/scenario/story. Merge data across your users to develop a generic, representative description.

Surrogate products These are products that may or may not compete directly with your product. They have similar features to your product and should be studied to learn about the strengths and weaknesses.

Synergy An idea from one participant positively influences another participant, resulting in an additional idea that would not have been generated without the initial idea.

Task allocation The process of determining who or what should be responsible for completing various tasks in a system. This may be dividing tasks among different humans or between human and machine based on specific criteria.

Telescoping People have a tendency to compress time. So, if you are asking about events that happened in the last six months, people may unintentionally include events that happened in the last nine months. Over-reporting of events will result.

Tertiary users Those who are affected by the system or the purchasing decision makers.

Think-aloud protocol A technique used during usability activities. The participant is asked to vocalize his/her thoughts, feelings, and opinions while working or interacting with the product.

Transfer of training Transfer of learned skills from one situation to another. You are leveraging the users’ current skill set so they do not have to learn everything new to use your product.

Translation bias Expert users will attempt to translate their knowledge so that the researcher can understand it. The more experts translate, the more there is the potential for them to oversimplify and distort their knowledge/skills/etc.

Usability The effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction with which users can achieve tasks when using a product. A usable product is easy to learn and remember; efficient, visually pleasing and pleasant to use. Usability enables users to recover quickly from errors and accomplish their tasks with ease.

User-centered design (UCD)—A product development approach that focuses on the end users of a product. The philosophy is that the product should suit the user, rather than making the user suit the product. This is accomplished by employing techniques, processes, and methods throughout the product lifecycle that focus on the user.

User profile A list of characteristics and skills that describe the end user. It should provide the range of characteristics or skill levels that a typical end user may fall in, as well as the most common ones.

User requirements The features/attributes your product should have or how it should perform from the users’ perspective.

Vague questions Questions that include imprecise terms like “rarely,” “sometimes,” “usually,” “few,” “some,” or “most.” Individuals can interpret these terms in different ways, affecting their answers and your interpretation of the results.

Valid/validity The question or task actually measures the desired trait.

Visit summary template A standardized survey or worksheet used in field studies. It is given to each investigator to complete at the end of each visit. This helps everyone get their thoughts on paper while fresh in their minds. It also speeds data analysis and avoids reporting only odd or funny anecdotal data.