Re: Do we have data? (Was Re: "Pave The Cowpaths" Design Principle)

On May 15, 2007, at 3:14 AM, Henrik Dvergsdal wrote:

>
>
> On 15 May 2007, at 11:04, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
>
>>> Do we have any data on how things are actually used "in the wild"?
>>
>> Some have gathered data, although I don't think we have anything  
>> that could be considered reproducible to a scientific level.
>>
>> However, my point was not necessarily to argue the validity of  
>> these particular parts of the spec, but rather to cite them as  
>> examples of the sort of thing that the design principle refers to.
>
> OK. But I wonder how we can get beyond the level of personal gut  
> feeling on these issues. We need to know the cowpaths before we can  
> pave them. I guess this could be an interesting research project.  
> Doesn't necessarily need to be very ambitious. Some data is better  
> than no data. And I think we really need it.
>
> So, if anyone has done something in this "field", at least I would  
> be interested in knowing about it - either on or off this list.

Ian Hickson has done research and posted the results in summary form,  
the reason I do not cite that as scientific research is because the  
procedure and dataset are not published because they are proprietary  
to Google.

Regards,
Maciej

Received on Tuesday, 15 May 2007 18:49:44 UTC