A comparison of usability tests and "Social Science" studies

Similarities

• Both often performed in a laboaratory
• Participants sampled who are representatives of the population of interest
• Participants are frequently trained (to control variables, etc.)
• Objective and subjective measures taken
• Data are analyzed and report is written

Differences

• Different goals (improving interface vs. truth of hypotheses)
• Multicausal interface problems vs. isolating few variables
• Often, descriptive statistics only is used in usability tests, and inferential statistics in social science studies
• More weight given to reports/observations in usability tests