When we say "representative user," we mean a
research participant who has the important characteristics of the
end-user of your product. People are all different, but sometimes
a common characteristic has predictable effects on the behavior
of a set of individuals. In order to study any aspect of your product,
we have to understand:
- which
effects on behavior are important; and
- which
personal characteristics are likely to cause these effects.
For example, let's say you're creating a website
for handling online stock trades. An important effect on behavior
might be whether users are more likely to make online stock trades
when they have access to real-time stock quotes. A personal characteristic
likely related to this effect would be whether the user had ever
owned shares of a publicly traded stock before. Any study examining
this behavioral effect (altered likelihood of online stock trades)
would need to take this personal characteristic into account.
Once we've determined which personal characteristics could affect
users' responses to your product, we need to find
out the frequency with which these characteristics occur among
your current or anticipated users. All of this information will
be taken into account when we design the program of research and
decide which criteria to use when screening study participants.
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