Re: [Heartlogic-dev] help boxes

[William L. Jarrold]

On Wed, 23 Mar 2005, Joshua N Pritikin wrote:

> As I see useful explanations go by on the mailing list, I am copying
> them into context help boxes on the OHL web site.  The help boxes appear
> as a [?].  If you click them then the full text appears.  This seems
> like a better approach than writing a manual which nobody will
> read.  ;-)

Sounds like an excellent idea for user interfaces in general.

But, we loose experimental validity if we vary how items are presented to 
subjects.  If some people click on the help boxes for a given item
and some do not this is an added variable that adds noise to ratings.

Also, I do not think that the average research participant should see how 
other people are making ratings.  I think that a given
participant's judgements should be based stricly on what they think.  They
should be afforded the ability to see what the average other person was 
thinking.

I think our main goal is to collect data to provide feedback for the 
improvement of a AI based model of social cognition.  Therefore we
should focus on experimental usage.

Bill

>