Henk Wijnholds — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 05:33:38 GMT

Hi Daniel. Nice article, it is funny (and perhaps not as remarkable as I thought it was) to read that the citizens of quebec like to know when their garbage is collected and where to park their cars. It’s exactly the same outcome which we got for a Dutch city last year.

The only difference is that we spoke real users instead of surrogate users. In this case your solution worked out well. But in many cases I think surrogate users may have other interests besides the clear truth. Extreme example: Not in every case a call center employee would want a user to find parking information on the website. Where would her job go if 90% of the calls is about that information?

Don’t get me wrong if you think I disapprove this kind of user research, gathering any kind of user information is a good thing. I just think it’s user research, extreme user research would be talking to the real user then :)

Henk Wijnholds — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 20:23:43 GMT

I’d like to read a bit more in-depth, usually that results in longer articles. So that is my answer.

Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Henk Wijnholds