

Startups: Your Users' Behavior Is Not A Random Variable - mrshoe
http://shoptalkapp.com/blog/2009/11/5/your-users-behavior-is-not-random

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ankeshk
Excellent post!

And if you follow the latest online copywriting best practices, you'll know
that creating 3-5 persona types for your website navigation is all that is
required. Almost every one will follow one of those 3-5 pathways.

Sidenote about the test the article runs - re: adding text to a graphic tab...

In 1985, after finding that pretty but unlabeled icons confused customers, the
Apple Computer Human Interface Group adopted the motto, "A word is worth a
thousand pictures," And a descriptive word or phrase was added beneath all
Macintosh icons.

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roundsquare
So... I don't own a startup, have never done user interface testing and am
generally unqualified to talk about how to design these things.

However, I'm not bad at statistics and logic, and I'm sorry, but the logic
here is pretty bad.

The author is comparing a user (edit: really user behavior on a feature/icon
that no one gets) to a _fair_ coin. The conclusion he comes to...? They are
not the same! Not exactly a lot of insight.

A much more fair comparison, in the example given, is comparing the user to a
_heavily biased_ coin. In this case, a coin that (almost) always comes up
heads. With this coin, the convergence is _much_ faster.

The (almost) fair coin is a better comparison to a feature that (almost) half
of your users do/don't get.

So, if you try with 30 users, 14 like something and 16 don't, you need more
data! But, if you try with 30 users, and 29 like it and 1 doesn't, you can
stopy.

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paraschopra
Great post, really wonder what the author's thoughts on A/B and Split Testing.
Do you think it adds value?

