Clues for determining expert users

This entry was originally at http://kingsley.blog-city.com/read/77615.htm

As I mentioned before, I’ve been recording my computer usage and analyzing it later. I’ve also tried to record my father’s and my brother’s interactions with the computer. I believe that I might have a good way of classifying users or expert or novice (or in fact anywhere on the scale) by noting pre-emptive mouse movement. No validation yet, that’ll have to wait till I have some more time.

Typically, when I click on a menu item which I know will bring up a dialog box, I immediately move the mouse pointer to the center of the screen, and sometimes, near the field which I have to manipulate. These actions show both, a deep knowledge of the user interface and the speed and dexterity to react to an interface action before it happens. On the other hand, when my father clicks on the start menu, even though he knows that a program will be launched, he leaves his mouse pointer over the menu item till the program has done launching, and then move it to where he wants to go.

Does anybody have any other (new/interesting) criteria for qualifying expert/novice users?

Update : I just noticed a logical fallacy in my own argument. Pre emptive mouse movement might infact be exhibited by expert users and rarely or never by novice users. But it does not imply that all expert users exhibit pre-emptive behavior! How could I be so thick ?!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 13th, 2003 at 7:31 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.