John, Lawyer, 29 years old, light blogging experience and
light blog reading experience. Read and listens to traditional media sources
8-10 hours a week. Uses blog and blog aggregators, going to a couple of specific
blogs daily, and finds filtering by topic, publication, and via blog references
to be important in his news search. Also, it is very important to him to get
news information that is more than 30 days old.
Started with an explanation of the system by the tester. John understands inbound
links as like trackback and that the "context will take you to the post."
Task #1
His first search was for "richard clark": though John commented that if his task were to do research for a paper, he would first want to go to the source of the actual article vs. commentary. He would want authoritative news articles, can't remember where in the interface the source was that he just saw a traditional source article. Said that maybe he should be searching on "dick clarke", though the results and his wanting to alter the search could be reflection of small data set because we are still testing. Thinks this may be a google-like tool that will do it, but not sure.
Task #2
John remembered there was a hotlink on the front page to "politics" so would browse that way.
Task #3
Noted that there were categories of news but not for people (bloggers), but Joe Hill is pretty easy to find and that his profile is well ranked. John would assume that Joe Hill was conservative because of the Andrew Sullivan links on the profile. Noted the total number of links, which looks small to him, but that could be a dataset problem also. Notes that Joe Hill is well linked to by this community.
John also noted that Joe Hill Dispatch misspelled Dick Clarke’s name, and so would wonder how closely Joe Hill was following the dick clarke thing.
John noted that may have just gone in a circle with the data.. Joe Hill led John to the “price of arrogance post”, but on context -- clicking through takes you back to Joe Hill listing. John was a little confused as to whether this was supposed to happen, he’s not sure what's going on, looks like a circle to him.
GENERAL COMMENTS:
John though it was a “neat system” and that he would use it regularly.
Questions..
What aspects of the site that were unclear?
John: though it does make sense to him, it might be politically unfeasible,
but he would identify news sources differently from blogs.
Yesterday, he was talking with a person who noted that a blog system like this where the point of the system would be to have more cohesion to follow a conversation across blogs is needed but it's also temporal, info gets stale very fast and so the system would have to accommodate that. He would expect a search on the congress to ….
John really liked the context on various bloggers, could tell relevance, could
see what people are saying, because the current way of finding conversation
is hard, where you either have to spend tons of time or be a blogger yourself.
The idea of tracking blogs this was is very cool.
What about going in circles? can you explain that?
First, John replicated it. But after he saw the looping nature of links in the
blog posts, he got the circle more clearly.
Thought the UI was well organized and clean, like the amount of excerpt, like colors, boarders.
Noted more generally that blogs are contextually lacking, because when he clicks through to the post, they don't really tell you much about what's going on in the post. They just launch into their rants, as though they expect readers to be up on them and their subjects already. But maybe there is a way to excerpt key words or get more across, without more words overall. He wonders if this is just a problem of the medium of blogs generally.
Any unexpected results occuring?
Don't remember anything like that.
How would you compare using this to other system?
He has a daily routine, WSJ, certain news sources, so the closed thing is news.google.com,
likes categories there, but has stats on see the wdcpost, plus 400 stories,
so he can pick and choose. Liked seeing the similar version on the number of
blogs posting on the topic. So the total posts are useful, liked other stats
as well.
Eric, 32, Lawyer, heavy blogger, heavy blog reader. 8-10 hours per week spend on news consumption, uses blog and blog aggregation sites everyday, and reads traditional news through RSS feeds, as well as clicking through RSS feeds to the traditional news sites and getting links send via email. Considers his ability to filter news by topic very important, but not so with publication. It is very important to find news information that is more than 30 days old.
Eric said the search bar seemed to him the best easiest way to search for
“Richard Clarke.” He would assume that 1 “link” is a
response. He first saw links, then responses, and questioned what responses
were in comparison, though he is not sure what the difference is between a link
and a response. Would assume that a link is just a link, and a response is with
commentary, though he’s not sure how the system would tell this.
He noted that he’s been ignoring headings, focused on the talk in the
posts.
Task 1.3 seems like there are 17 different posts and there is a little discussion but not a lot, some people are pointing but there is not a threaded discussion, not add on add on add on, but “being a blogger myself, know that comments” are important across blogs.
He’s not clear on how he gets to the two responses with the one link,
but clicking there, apparently it is an outgoing link. Now it makes sense, can
see how that works. Would click on context to get to more responses to links,
without additional commentary, but don't know how you know that… but he
would assume that's what it is.. he thinks that over time, after using tool,
would probably figure it out.
He’s not sure about the “meet the press” text, is it commentary
verses a traditional article? Again thinks that once he figures things out in
a system, he doesn’t need to keep reminding himself over and over what
things are, so figures that would happen quickly.
Task #2
This confuses him a little, in black, how the number of posts is shown.
Now after Task 2.9, get links, which are links out to other things.
Aside: he really like the design, spacing, the lines of color but in comparison, there was one page that did seem crowded to him at first.
Task #3
He would assume a profile is most if not all he would need about a blogger.
He would assume that that ranking means Joe Hill is somewhat popular.
General Comments:
He really like the topic filter, like spacing, categories. Would use this system.
General Questions:
What was unclear or confusing?
“Initially, some of it is hard to understand.” He thought to himself
... what does this information mean, didn't read what a link was closely, wasn't
sure what the profile graphic and the names of the blog, but visually he gravitated
to the data verses the category. Once he had links and references in his head,
then he got them.
Overall, it’s pretty good, but have to get what things are, like the question mark for help. Didn’t know what "activity" meant, though he knows what most recent first is, and maybe "newest first."
What do you expect to happen now? (Showing filter by activity, freshest, etc).
He said that it will resort by activity, and guesses it would mean the most
numbers in the context.
If he were really interested in this, he’s not sure about links verses
responses, wasn't sure what would happen but got nothing unexpected. Only one
thing, wasn't sure if with "A richard clarke traditional article"
link, he would get a blog, or a news article, but once he clicked it was clear,
so because it's one of five blogs, he's expecting blog posts.
He liked the profile because it is what he expected, liked the person icon in the name and for profiles, because he reads blogs as people, where as msnbc is a news company or an entity, and so likes the people symbol.
The search for him was not clear, wasn't sure what the scope of the search
was, because other sites might search their own stuff, and then search the web,
and the search box and the button are generic and so look like other ones, though
once people use the search they'll know what it does once see the results, by
trial and error. He got it right away but the style of the search bar and button
are still generic.
Really likes the tool.
He though it could do to have arrows maybe to things inbound, or out, so directional, posts pointing to this post, verses and arrow out for links pointing out. To - from, verses the to-in or maybe it "links to other posts". Thought about a temporal filter... default 30 days, but then choose longer periods for search.. and this would be handy.
At bottom of results, like seeing page 1, 2, etc with first last and previous, next.. etc. But would want to emulate Google results at bottom.
When he clicked on Andrew Sullivan, he expected to get search results for that, not his actual blog, can search, but would expect something like the profile, with posts and context to posts. Though when he saw the profile, he figured it was more static or stats, though the stats would change…. Maybe there should be a separate profile and posts. Maybe open a new window when you go to a new site.
Mike, 35, web developer, has seen blogs a few times, but mostly uses chat rooms to get technical data, consumes news media 4-7 hours per week, never uses blog or blog aggregators, searches specific sites for articles. Considers it somewhat important to filter news by topic and publication, but very important to find information more than 30 days old.
Task #1
Mike sees the results as showing up with the greatest number of responses,
maybe?
Sees he’s finding the most respondents.
Task 1.3 He’s not seeing any responses in the context box, but see numbers
and links,
would expect to see other links and responses, go to a second page or sort.
Seems somewhat confused.
He found two posts that linked to the “meet the press” story by
searching for the title of the story in the search box. He thought the “meet
the press” link would be a blog post about meet the press, not the meet
the press article.
He found the other link in the previous post.
Task #2
He forgot the task, while looking through the interface and trying to see what
was there, repeated, then found profiles not linked to profile, or blogs linked
through to blogs.
Seemed to understand the task and system better and commented: this is a cool
product.
Task #3
Mike opened Joe Hill, then went to the Joe Hill profile, and then found ranking. Asked a question, what is ranking, popularity? Commented that it was probably some sort of hit counter, page views, number of people, relative he bets.
General Comments:
More sorting would be nice. Context is giving a little bit of a threading of
conversation.
It would be nice to have thumbnails of posts to the side, to have a sense of
it, something besides just text. Had the expectation of the content type, opinion
or editorial, as opposed to factual bits of info.
Topics: is there a topic beyond politics, browse, might have been good to have a thumbnail of the main topics to jump around, or a sidebar so that wherever he is, there could be a dropdown that lets him jump from one area to another.
He's timestarved and lazy, so he might want the latest coolest pre-picked posts in an area so that he could just glance at it...
He got the filtering mechanism, where unchecking a filter would bring less
posts because only the other filters would have posts shown, liked it. Might
add stats under the orange context box... maybe rank, or something more of the
context.