taking it in
Wake up. Wake up. Wake up! I am not experiencing that lovely productive high today, instead I'm barely keeping my eyes open. The meds are doing great things for the depression part of the depression, but are not very reliable when it comes to making me feel less sluggish and tired and slow and unfocused. And I came into work special on Sunday to get some things done. Why? Because I spent the entire day of Thursday in Boston watching user testing.
Was it fun? Not really. It was frustrating. I always want to be on the other side of the glass; I happen to think I'm pretty good at testing, and this woman was pretty bad. But in a room full of account people and client reps there's not much knowledge on how things should run in user testing. Like, keeping the questions consistent from one user to the next. Asking every user ALL the questions. Otherwise, what do I have to work with? uhm, well, two people said this, but I don't know how the others felt cause they weren't asked, so we can throw that right in the garbage. The silly moderator said, the beauty of qualitative testing was that one can change things from one to the next. Only, even within qualitative testing one has to be consistent so one can say "six out of seven preferred this" or "did that" and have it mean something. Anyway, I stuffed my face with M&Ms and tried to not get all knotted up about it.
But now I'm sitting here trying to come up with a report based on this testing and the problems are as described above. I don't want it to reflect somehow on me that there isn't anything amazing coming out of these tests. But there just won't be. Alas.
The flights to and from Boston were really magical though. We left in the morning and were able to see the fall foliage coming in over New England. Beautiful reds and oranges and bright yellows, and so much breadth of trees, just lovely. And then leaving Boston at night I could see the aesthetic, compact skyline, and the Charles, bending and wending around with its bridges, sweeping by MIT, and of course the Fenway, lit up, and I am sure I even saw the Citgo sign, or what used to be the Citgo sign. What is it now?
There's nothing so breathtaking, for me, than flying into Manhattan when the route takes you directly down the island. SO UNBELIEVABLE! The flight was late and we were turning around and I thought, oh well, I'm on the wrong side of the plane this time, but then, SWOOSH, you're right over the skyscrapers, so close that you think you can reach down and pick up the Empire State Building. God. So magnificent. And then when you're Queens-bound to La Guardia you see the skyline again, in profile. I nudged the woman next to me "look!" but she waved me off. I think she was afraid of flying. I am too, a little, but when you see that, it's as if you're ready to expire.
gertrude
Was it fun? Not really. It was frustrating. I always want to be on the other side of the glass; I happen to think I'm pretty good at testing, and this woman was pretty bad. But in a room full of account people and client reps there's not much knowledge on how things should run in user testing. Like, keeping the questions consistent from one user to the next. Asking every user ALL the questions. Otherwise, what do I have to work with? uhm, well, two people said this, but I don't know how the others felt cause they weren't asked, so we can throw that right in the garbage. The silly moderator said, the beauty of qualitative testing was that one can change things from one to the next. Only, even within qualitative testing one has to be consistent so one can say "six out of seven preferred this" or "did that" and have it mean something. Anyway, I stuffed my face with M&Ms and tried to not get all knotted up about it.
But now I'm sitting here trying to come up with a report based on this testing and the problems are as described above. I don't want it to reflect somehow on me that there isn't anything amazing coming out of these tests. But there just won't be. Alas.
The flights to and from Boston were really magical though. We left in the morning and were able to see the fall foliage coming in over New England. Beautiful reds and oranges and bright yellows, and so much breadth of trees, just lovely. And then leaving Boston at night I could see the aesthetic, compact skyline, and the Charles, bending and wending around with its bridges, sweeping by MIT, and of course the Fenway, lit up, and I am sure I even saw the Citgo sign, or what used to be the Citgo sign. What is it now?
There's nothing so breathtaking, for me, than flying into Manhattan when the route takes you directly down the island. SO UNBELIEVABLE! The flight was late and we were turning around and I thought, oh well, I'm on the wrong side of the plane this time, but then, SWOOSH, you're right over the skyscrapers, so close that you think you can reach down and pick up the Empire State Building. God. So magnificent. And then when you're Queens-bound to La Guardia you see the skyline again, in profile. I nudged the woman next to me "look!" but she waved me off. I think she was afraid of flying. I am too, a little, but when you see that, it's as if you're ready to expire.
gertrude
posted by Gertrude at 3:30 PM
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