User Exposure Hours

Interesting article from Jared Spool this week. He’s claiming that quality designs directly correlate to the number of hours the team spends watching users: “Over the years, there has been plenty of debate over how many participants are enough for a study. It turns out we were looking in the wrong direction. When you focus on the hours of exposure, the number of participants disappears as an important discussion. We found 2 hours of direct exposure with one participant could be as valuable (if not more valuable) than eight participants at 15-minutes each. The two hours with that one participant, seeing the detailed subtleties and nuances of their interactions with the design, can drive a tremendous amount of actionable value to the team, when done well.” http://www.uie.com/articles/user_exposure_hours/