User Sketches: A Quick, Inexpensive, and Effective way to Elicit More Reflective User Feedback

Author: Maryam Tohidi, William Buxton, Ronald Baecker, Abigail Sellen
Comments:
1. Nabeel's blog
Summary:
This paper compares various traditional methods of usability testing with one that involves sketching. Usability test was done with 48 participants on house climate control system.
3 prototypes were used. Participants were divided into groups of 12. First 3 groups were given one prototype each and the last one was given all the 3 prototypes.
Verbal feedback suggested first 2 prototypes were better than third one. Result was consistent with the 4th group.The hypothesis that the 4th group, that had all the prototypes, would give more feedback was proven wrong. Many of the participants had comments and not suggestions. They could not express their suggestion.
Feedback through Sketch - The participants came up with more ideas. The first 2 prototypes were mostly replicated exactly with minor modification. The 4th group came up with ideas that had features pulled out of all the 3 prototypes.

Discussion:
Excited to see a new application for Sketch.
These sketch + a domain specific sketch recognition system would be more valuable.