Am I the Unethical One?

Re:Am I the Unethical One? by q845712 on Friday May 26, 2023 @06:00PM (#36090010)

depends on the situation but generally most people aren't that enthusiastic to be your UX guinea pigs, and it isn't that much fun to administer the same test so many times in a single day (think of how bored your optometrist sounds as they ask you which lens is better). I worked at a shop that had a target of 3-5 users for any given UX testing because usually it starts to get repetitive after that - you tend to hit the diminishing returns portion of the curve.

So if you assume that the UX tests were short (20-30 minutes) you're still talking ~15 total hours spent on UX testing, or two full work days. That would be a surprising amount of time.

As someone else said, it's conceivable that they ran very short studies on a large number of people in the context of having a party or a couple of small gatherings, but it does seem unlikely overall.

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Re:Am I the Unethical One? by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF on Friday May 26, 2023 @07:40PM (#36090709)

Just to recap: very generously, a college student with money to spend (that might sound like a joke but I consider fortunate circumstances) on convincing people that it’s worth their time to sit through a usability test actually going through with it “for the lulz”. The part about a person being willing to do a bunch of work to avoid doing a bunch of work makes sense (typical “mental gymnastics”) but it kinda falls apart at 30+ real people legitimately agreeing. It’s ironic that a single-digit amount is just as useful; that’s even a more believable lie.

Thanks for explaining!

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