\n\tTree Test<\/td> | \u20077<\/td> | \u20078<\/td> | 10<\/td> | 13<\/td> | \u200718<\/td> | \u200729<\/td> | \u200734<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n Table 2:<\/strong> Key percentiles for each study type (cells are completion times in seconds).<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\tStudy Type<\/th> | 50th (Median)<\/th> | 75th<\/th> | 90th<\/th> | 95th<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n | \n\n\tTA<\/td> | 5.6<\/td> | 9.2<\/td> | 17.1<\/td> | 22.3<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n\tNon-TA<\/td> | 4.8<\/td> | 7.5<\/td> | 12.4<\/td> | 16.7<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | \n\tTree Test<\/td> | 1.1<\/td> | 1.5<\/td> | \u20072.4<\/td> | \u20072.8<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n Table 3:<\/strong> Estimated times (in minutes) for different percentiles to complete five<\/strong> tasks for each study type (task completion time only\u2014does not include time for reading tasks or completing post-task questions).<\/p>\nSo which percentile should you use for planning? Starting with the median (the 50th<\/sup> percentile) seems like a good place to start, but it\u2019s risky. By definition, the median is the point at the middle of the distribution where 50% of tasks in our data were longer. That means that half the time, the tasks will take longer than planned. It\u2019s usually better to be a bit conservative and use something like the 75th<\/sup> percentile.<\/p>\nThere are also other times when you want to be sure you have enough time, so it would be better to use the 90th<\/sup> or 95th<\/sup> percentile.<\/p>\nSummary and Discussion<\/h1>\nThe key takeaways from our analysis of 1,222 unmoderated task times are:<\/p>\n Median times for different research protocols are significantly different.<\/strong> The task time distributions for the three research protocols are different enough that researchers should use the estimates in Tables 2 and 3 when planning a TA, non-TA, or tree test study rather than the overall median and interquartile percentiles.<\/p>\nUse the 75th<\/sup> percentile for planning.<\/strong> When you plan an unmoderated study and lack historical data about the task, we generally recommend using the 75th<\/sup> percentile for the planned research protocol. This means most tasks will take less than these times by task type:<\/p>\n\n- Tree Tests: 20 seconds<\/li>\n
- Non-TA Tasks: ~90 seconds<\/li>\n
- TA Tasks: ~120 seconds<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
These estimates don\u2019t include pre-task or post-task questions.<\/strong> The task times in the analysis are only the times participants spend attempting a task and don\u2019t include reading instructions or answering post-task questions. Both activities will add some time to an overall study depending on the length and complexity of instructions and the number of questions.<\/p>\nThere are no moderated data in these estimates.<\/strong> This analysis did not include any data from moderated studies (tasks with an attending researcher). We included only data from unmoderated studies collected using the MUiQ platform.<\/p>\nThe dataset is not necessarily broadly representative.<\/strong> Although we created a large dataset of task times from unmoderated TA, non-TA, and tree test studies, a broader dataset could likely include longer times. We created our data sets from the types of UX studies we typically conduct, which may be different from other UX research contexts where pragmatic tasks are more complex (e.g., coding an error-free speech recognition app) or there is more of a focus on hedonic activities (e.g., \u201cspend as much time as you want to browse the website to see if you find anything interesting\u201d).<\/p>\nThese data do not define \u201cgood\u201d task times.<\/strong> Be careful not to extrapolate this time data into a benchmark. An unmoderated task that takes 40 seconds is shorter than the median time in our dataset, but this doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s necessarily a fast or efficient task experience. For example, clicking a login or entering a search string are tasks that should take much less than 30 seconds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A common logistical consideration when planning a task-based usability study is how much time you should plan for a task. Many usability studies (especially benchmark studies) suffer from trying to do too many things. That includes asking participants to attempt too many tasks. It\u2019s understandable why tasks get packed in\u2014even low-cost usability testing takes time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41187,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"default","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_price":"field_56e41332a1ae5","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"Tribe__Tickets_Plus__Commerce__WooCommerce__Main","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[183,189,2,39],"tags":[26,30,190,73],"acf":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/measuringu.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40896"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/measuringu.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/measuringu.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/measuringu.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/measuringu.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40896"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/measuringu.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41186,"href":"https:\/\/measuringu.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40896\/revisions\/41186"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/measuringu.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/measuringu.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/measuringu.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/measuringu.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} | |