Specify Requirements and Classifiers for Selection - II

For a company's hypothetical online hotel reservation system, there are many possible audiences for the web site: business travelers, leisure travelers (who could be the same people as the business travelers), administrative assistants who book travel for others, spouses of trav elers, hotel employees, rewards program members, meeting or event planners, and so on. To keep this test (and our example) simple, let's say that you want to concentrate on two user groups to see if there are differences in how successful the) are with the reservations system: people who are members of your rewards program and people who are not. These are classifiers.

TT,« breakdown has implications for the test design and implications ror fiJJn* oarS Its You know that most users of the web site reservations svstnfare Srds members. Should you then make sure that most of the

participants are rewards members? It depends on the business requirements and the coals of the test. Is i t the goal of the test to make the s.te easier to use for rewards members or for all users? Do you want to compare error rates or other measures between the two types of users? People who are rewards members 

mav indeed use the site more frequently than non-members, giving them many more opportunities to learn its quirks and to invent their own workarounds for any hindrances. These people could reveal interesting findings that may suggest to the design team things they could do to improve the interface.

But if one of the business goals is to attract more people to the s.te - people who are not rewards members - certainly you want a significant number of non-members to take part in your test.