Aimless Ramblings

LJI Week 1: Quality
June 15 marked the ten year anniversary of working for my current employer. This was both gratifying and slightly amusing to me because of a comment made by one of my former coworkers when I left my previous job.

"An accessibility job for a large mainstream company?" they reportedly scoffed. "That'll probably only last a year, if that long."

Hello, still here!

Oh, don't get me wrong, it's definitely been a bumpy ride at times. Our team has always been that troublesome puzzle piece that company leadership wasn't quite sure where or how to slot into their operations. It was a bit like being part of a jigsaw puzzle where the assembler could change a piece's location, but also its size, and shape, and name, and overall purpose. And, don't let the default past tense of storytelling fool you, they're still at it!

The disadvantages to being that puzzle piece are obvious, but believe it or not, there were advantages too. For example, it meant I did the routine stuff like reviewing content to identify accessibility issues, but also worked with developers to design feature enhancements so that the content was easier to understand and navigate. Myself and other colleagues were encouraged to share our knowledge by responding to calls for papers at national conferences, and if we were accepted, got to travel to the conference and present are findings. Without a doubt though, customer research was one of the most interesting activities I got to participate in.

Of course, ten years ago, I didn't know anything about research or usability studies seeking customer feedback. When I was asked to help out with our first study, I sorta figured, you put together a prototype, showed it to the customer, let them play with it for a bit, and then asked a few questions. Easy-peasy! Yeah, not so much.

• What are the research questions your study is trying to answer?


• What prototypes or study materials will be shown to each participant?


• Is there enough time to prepare the prototypes/study materials before the study is scheduled to begin?


• Will participants need to sign nondisclosure agreements in order to view the prototypes/study materials, and has legal approved the language for those agreements?


• Do you plan to compensate participants? If so, how much will each participant receive? Have you secured funding for the compensations, and if so, for how many participants?


• Where will the study sessions take place, and is there a fee to use that space?


• How much time will be allotted for each session?


• How do you plan to recruit participants for the study?


• Will any study participants be less than 18 years of age? If so, have you written a parent/guardian consent form? Has legal approved the consent form language?

You know that old Star Trek joke about the different management styles of captain Kirk verses Captain Picard? With Kirk, the strategy with a planet was beam down and poke any aliens with a stick, and if it was another ship, "Fire phasers!" Picard's strategy, no matter what was in the offing? "Lets hold a meeting."

Yup, you guessed it, I was on Picard's ship. So many meetings!

If you're reading the list of logistics above and thinking to yourself, "Dude, where's the fun?" I don't blame you. The answer was, in the beginning, I didn't have to worry about most of that stuff. I got to bounce potential research questions around with other team members, and then, once we had nailed down what we were trying to discover, I helped write the research protocol. The protocol was important because when you're conducting a usability study seeking feedback, the golden rule you're supposed to follow is to not bias the participants. The prototypes or study materials should be evaluated the same way by every participant, and one of the ways to ensure that consistency was to write a script that would be read in every session.

Now, what about the prototypes or study materials? Should you show those to participants in the same order every time as well? If you're like me and said, "Yes," I regret to inform you that you're wrong.

Think about it this way. You're participating in a research study lasting an hour and a half and looking at three different prototypes for the researchers. By the time you reach the third prototype, the likelihood is that you're going to be getting tired and imagining how nice it will be when the session's over and they stop asking you questions. If I always presented the prototypes in the same order, prototype number three would probably get a pretty raw deal. So, as researchers you counterbalance or change the order of items being evaluated.

Yes, it was a lot to keep track of, and it did get just a bit tedious reading the same script to six or eight participants every day during the study, but the payoff was being able to meet and speak with people with no filters in-between you and their opinions. The hard part, if you can believe it in this age of social media where people seem compelled to find fault with every little thing, was convincing participants to answer honestly and in depth. "We want to know what you like and what you don't like about each prototype, and you won't hurt our feelings in any way by telling us what you think about them."

There were typically three or four of us in the room with a study participant, one person reading the script and asking questions, and the others observing reactions and taking notes. We encouraged participants to "talk through" their experience while exploring a prototype, and I imagine they sometimes may have felt as though they were under a microscope. If they had a pensive expression or made an unhappy noise, one of us would invariably say, "Could you please share with us what you're thinking right now?"

It was time consuming, and exhausting, and while a study was going on, we'd barely had time to grab a meal in-between sessions. Is it weird if I say I miss the experience?

The last study I participated in was during the summer of 2022 at a conference in New Orleans, just after the July 4th holiday. We all wore masks during each session because COVID was very much still a thing. While venturing out for a late dinner one evening, a coworker accidently led me into a hole in a New Orleans sidewalk. Before the conference was over, we had to push the abort button and head home because everyone on the research team, except me, caught COVID. And finally, when I did arrive home, I decided to self-quarantine in a hotel for a few days, just in case I might still be a carrier of the dreaded virus.

Yeah, even with all of that, I still miss conducting research studies.

Dan

Hello all.

Unfortunately, this is my sacrifice entry for week 13 of LJ Idol. Work has been very busy lately, and I also started getting sick over the weekend. Call me a wimp, but given a choice in-between writing and sleeping right now, I'm going to pick sleeping. LOL

My sincere thanks to everyone for your kind comments and support this season!

Dan

LJI Week 11: Haver
When Sean came out of the bathroom, the newscast he had been watching wasn't on the bedroom's TV screen. Instead, its viewing area was filled with a fractal pattern of snowflakes.

"Vera," he said, using the wake word he had linked to his assistant, "what happened to the news?"

There was a pause, and then she answered, "Behind the curtain of dreams so vast, where skateboards and effigies cast, in realms of salt and moonlight’s gleam, embrace the magic, and find your theme."

( Read more... )

LJI Week 10: synesthesia
He can hear the wind outside his window, the oak there bending in time to its gusts. This evening there's a bite to the air, a reminder of the changing season that's echoed in the russet leaves floating groundward.

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LJI Week 7: Hikikomori
How many times have you heard the expression, "Humans are gregarious creatures?"

There are a few variations. Sometimes "animals" is swapped out for "creatures," and "social" is substituted for "gregarious," but the overall meaning is the same. The overarching idea is that humans are convivial, fond of company, companionable. Oxford's list of adjectives even stretches to include "clubbable" which I frankly doubt is a word, but ya know, Oxford and all.

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LJI Week 5: Oubaitori
The duck pond was bounded on three sides by a gravel trail, but the fourth was a rocky slope topped with several sizeable boulders. At the pond's center there was a small island with two scrubby-looking trees and an assortment of leafy bushes. Later that summer, Kara knew the water would be choked with lily pads, but at the moment it looked fairly clean and no ducks were visible.

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LJI Week 3: Without You
Jake waited until everyone had left that morning before he started playing.

"Are you sure you don't want to come with us?" his mother had stopped to ask before the family exodus.

"Dude!" his younger brother Alan had enthused, bouncing on his heals behind her, "I can't believe you're passing up a chance to see Deadpool & Wolverine."

( Read more... )

LJI Week 1: Someone who will love you in all your damaged glory
I’m one of those geeky guys who loves techy things, but like an elephant in the room I can never ignore, there’s always been a dichotomy splitting those cool gadgets down the middle. No, not cost, although okay, I do rather expect to be priced out of the first viable robot companion that hits the market. I’m a blind guy, and for me, the issue digging that trench betwixt the good and the bad is accessibility. In my case, whether it’s a computer or phone app, accessibility means that whatever screen reader I’m using can read and maneuver through the app interface.

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LJI 10.0, Introduction
I began writing entries for LJ Idol in season 8, and looking back, I think that very first prompt shaped how I would view the competition. What was the prompt? When You Pray, Move Your Feet

Now, just on the face of it, that topic had the potential to really scare the crap out of you as a writer. I mean, would you automatically be locked into constructing a story or personal tale around that religious theme? If not, how far could you wander afield before the audience would cry foul? Me, I didn't worry about any of those things, I started with a vegetable fight!

The radish struck Tony on his forehead as soon as he opened the front door.

Oh sure, there are stories I've written since then that I'm fonder of for various reasons--the characters embody something I believe in, or the plot has a cool twist--but this one was special, not only for being my first LJI entry, but for showing me the best way of dealing with Gary's mind twisting prompts. The day that first topic came out, I was traveling out of town for work, and had planned to bring along a bag of radishes my wife had purchased for me as a hotel snack. When I arrived and discovered the dreadful snackless truth of the forgotten vegetables, I decided, whatever else I did, radishes had to be a major component of the entry I wrote. My mind somehow came up with the hapless image of a boy being targeted with a radish by his girlfriend, I wrote the first sentence, and the rest of the story followed from there.

Of course, not all my submissions would begin so easily, and by Entry 4, What Does Narcissism Have To Do With Me, I had moved from fictitious stories to actual life experiences, relating an adventure from my high school days. At that time, I was unaware of LJ Idol's history, the fact that fiction had originally been the exception, not the norm. To me, the phrase "writing competition" meant writing fiction, and to be honest, I was a little dismayed that I had wandered off what I saw as the true path of speculative fiction I had envisioned for myself.

Nevertheless, I subsequently decided that Topic 5, Inconceivable, was best suited to a tale from my previous occupation as an adaptive technology trainer, and that entry 6, Food Memory, was perfect for telling about the time my youngest was injured and learned about the potato chip policemen. By the time Gary got to topic 7, Bupkis, I was ready to have some real fun, and told a story in first person that seemed like another childhood anecdote, but eventually turned into a horror story which couldn't possibly be true.

Why, you may ask, am I belaboring a group of entries written back in 2011? First, because I think the introduction that's important here is who I am as a writer, not a list of statistics including age, sex, and location. The other, much more reflective reason, is that "I got it," in season 8. When I looked back, I discovered that I took a Bye during weeks 3 and 9, but didn't stop writing until I was eliminated in entry 20, Y2K, and A Civil Campaign. That determination and commitment to writing was something I lost in subsequent seasons, and I'm determined to get it back this time around.

Believe it or not, I'm not even that worried about what Gary has in store for us in season 10. Come on, I live with my wife, two teenage daughters, and three female dogs. What can he possibly do to me that they haven't already done? *grin*

Dan