This paper is about a study of French participants that determined the different types of computer users there are, and created generalizations of this that could affect future design of computer interfaces. In my reading, I focused on the basic methods of the study and the results over the way the results were generated.
The French participants were recruited by phone and internet. Because of the nature of the study, all members of the family were required to participate. Overall, the panel included 661 households and 1434 individuals. The families installed a tracking application on their computer, which, once running, appeared as an icon in the system tray.
The study generated five computer usage day profiles, four household profiles, and five individual profiles.
The computer usage day profiles are:
Household Profiles:
1. PC 24/24 - 15%
2. Always available- 33%
3. PC on demand- 30%
4. Low usage- 22%
Individual Profiles:
After this study, they found three implications for design:
1. Operating System design: They believe it could enhance user experience by making computers boot faster. This would be better for the PC on demand and low usage groups.
2. Application and service design: They feel that in application design, the features only need to address one or two of the different groups, instead of trying to please all of the groups.
3. Web services design: "Providing new services as Web services rather than casual application appears to be a key for success."
Overall, this was an interesting paper. While I don't doubt that they got a decent representative group, it would be interesting to see what the results would be in America, or a different country.
Other interesting data:
Link to the paper here.
