White Papers

Subjective Duration Assessment: An Implicit Probe for Software Usability

• Tags:
• tasks,
• duration,
• explores,
• satisfaction

Overview This paper explores a new approach to gauging users' difficulties with tasks, interfaces, and situations the authors refer to as subjective duration assessment. The approach, adapted from results described in the interruption literature in psychology, centers on the use of time estimation to characterize performance. The authors introduce a metric, named Relative Subjective Duration (RSD) that provides a means for probing the difficulty that users have with performing tasks - without directly asking users about the difficulty. The authors do this in order to avoid the inherent bias toward the positive end of the scale typically seen in user satisfaction ratings after usability studies.

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