A New Formula for Quantitative UX Decision Making
by
Jeff Sauro, Jim Lewis
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Imagine a formula that would allow you to take data from a very small pool of users (often as few as 8; possibly as few as 3) and figure out why, for instance, Autodesk customers are calling support, whether Budget.com visitors can rent a car in under a minute, or why cardholders were reluctant to use a mobile payment site. Such a formula exists, and it’s not some abstract “formula for success” in management strategy or a design technique. We’re talking about a mathematical formula that’s easy to use but can transform the way you measure and manage the user experience. The formula is called the Adjusted-Wald Binomial Confidence Interval (“Adjusted-Wald Interval” for short), but its name isn’t as important as what it can do. Its power is in helping estimate the behavior of an entire user population, even when the sample size is small. It does this by taking a simple proportion as input and producing a confidence interval. For example, suppose 10 users have attempted a task and 7 completed it successfully. The simple successful completion rate is 70%. But, given such a small sample size, how can you have any faith in the result? Would it be reasonable to expect to get exactly 7,000 succe
Tom Johnson on 27 Apr 12How the Associated Press uses Twitter & Facebook 12 The Associated Press uses social media both to gather and disseminating information, approaching each social network differently. "Part of what we're doing is sharing content in a curated way," Eric Carvin, the AP's social media editor, tells DigiDay. "It helps as news gathering; if we're looking to find someone who has amateur video, we put out a call and a good chance we'll hear back from people." "When big news breaks, (Twitter is) one of the first tools we turn to to see if people are on the ground there, to get right to - and looking for - expert sources," said Carvin…. The AP also uses Twitter for promoting its own reporters, as well as its other social accounts. A big part of its overall strategy, according to Carvin, is to highlight the expertise of AP people around the world…. The AP finds that Facebook, not Twitter, is the best social tool for engagement. It has five or six accounts that actively communicates with its fans. It also does a lot of crowdsourcing on Facebook. Carvin highlighted the AP's use of crowdsourcing memories for the tenth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. He said they received dozens of responses that were thoughtful and interesting, and in a nimble move, decided to take many and put them out as two separate stories across the wire. "It contributed to our journalism," he said. However, Carvin noted that the AP has scaled back its use of Facebook. What used to be hourly posts now are between four and six per day. "We go to Twitter for breaking news, not Facebook," Carvin said. "If it's important, we'll toss it onto Twitter right away. We go to Facebook only when it's transcendent. Twitter is a breaking news platform, both in terms of what we put out and how we gather news. If news breaks, we look to Twitter more than Facebook."