Changes

As part of our primary research , we decided to conduct two experiments. The first was a surface quiz of sorts where we simply polled people on their Facebook experiences to see if we were heading in the right direction. The second was a longer form of analysis where we had them use Facebook and we would record the results.

To begin our research, we surveyed Facebook users about their Facebook use habits. Our demographic for our tests were young adults between the ages 17-25 who were attending a post-secondary institution. To begin, we sat down as a team and discussed what questions we would need to ask people to gather information about how they use Facebook and . We also needed to determine what areas of the main Facebook page we would want to focus our attention when we would test them in our second wave of testing.

Our second wave of research consisted of a booth setup outside of Seneca@York’s library and computing commons. Our demographic for our tests were young adults between the ages 17-25 who were attending a post-secondary institution. We had a table setup with three laptops, two running windows Windows 7 for the testers and one running Fedora 15 for the subject. The subjects’ subject’s computer was also outfitted with had gtk-recordMyDesktop, installed. This allowed us afterwards to view the users user’s actions on the webpage in conjunction with a FujiFilm Finepix camera mounted above the screen to record their eye movements. We utilized three supervising researchers throughout the process, the first two operating the Windows 7 laptops and the third to setup and supervise the subject.

The procedure for our first experiment was simple, ; we printed off our questionnaire and asked a few people to complete the survey. We never collected any personal information about the people being surveyed and the people being surveyed were informed about this. Once the person was finished filling in the survey, they returned it to us.

The procedure for the second experiment was quite simple contrary to the setup. It consisted of a very basic premise. The test subject would be viewing the Facebook home page, homepage where a chat window was open to one of the researchers. The researcher would then periodically send simple elementary maths to the subject to which they would have to solve and respond (ex. 2x4). Periodically the second researcher would ‘Like’ or ‘Post’ something on the subject wall causing a popup to appear in the bottom left-hand corner of their screen. The subject would then have to verbally say ‘notification’ to show that they noticed the change.

For collecting data, for both tests we ran into difficulty due to the sample size. For our second test, we were setup near the entrance to the library and computing commons we were frequently turned down for volunteers to participate in either of our studies. That being said we managed to get a larger sample for our smaller test due to it’s its small temporal footprint. The longer test got mixed answers ranging from ignoring our offer to promising to come back. We also had the difficulty that since we had a Student Federation banner (this because we needed permission, which we obtained from Student Federation, to perform our survey in the halls of Seneca College), students thought we were representing Student Federation and would ask us about bus schedules or information regarding services offered at the college.

In our first test , our results showed that for most people the most popular method of communication with others was using the Facebook chat feature. This was because this gave people instant communication with the person they were talking with. The second most popular means of communication was using the Facebook messaging feature and finally the least most popular means of communication is communication through wall posts. Knowing how most people communicated with others allowed us to know how to flood users with information to see if change blindness would come into affect effect when we tried to send other forms of communication and to see what the response times where like.

In our second test we experienced a relatively small array of results. They ranged from participants immediately recognizing the change to users who had only a minor delay, i. e. two or three seconds. The average participant seemed to recognize the notifications almost as soon as they appeared. The most challenging aspect to analyzing the results was the fact that we lacked the tools to properly account for small changes in reaction times. This is important because in such a small amount of data, small variance could prove to provide tangible results if the scope of the participant selection were larger.

==== Things we would change====One of the main things we would change when gathering our primary data is a substantial increase in our sample size. With a combined total of roughly 20 people, there is a lot of room for error. If we surveyed 100 or more people per survey, there would be a more accurate result.  Another thing we would change is the hardware we used for the second survey, the interactive booth session. We used a combination of hardware, ranging from an external camera to an open-sourced screen capturing program. If we could have used a laptop or desktop with a built in camera, and a screen capturing program that allowed the software to automatically tie in the camera feed, the data gathering step would be much quicker. Since there is a delay between what the camera shows and what the screen capture shows (both where running at a different frame rate), there was room for error. Only with this better hardware and software, would this error be eliminated once and for all.