Designing User Studies in Informatics

This book provides a practical, hands-on guide to conducting user studies in informatics. The book is intended for advanced undergraduate students, beginning graduate students and as a refresher for any researcher evaluating the usefulness of informatics for people by doing user studies.

This book provides a practical, hands-on guide to conducting user studies in informatics. Its purpose is to explain the foundations of different experimental designs together with the appropriate statistical analyses for studies most often conducted in computing. Common mistakes are highlighted together with guidelines on how they should be avoided. The book is intended for advanced undergraduate students, beginning graduate students and as a refresher for any researcher evaluating the usefulness of informatics for people by doing user studies. With clear, non-technical language, fundamental concepts are explained and illustrated using diverse examples. In addition to the foundations, practical tips to starting, acquiring permission, recruiting participants, conducting and publishing studies are included. A how-to guide, in the form of a cookbook, is also included. The cookbook recipes can be followed step-by-step or adjusted as necessary for different studies. Each recipe contains step-by-step instructions and concrete advice.