Anton Stasche

Bachelor's thesis

Concluding my Bachelor's programme in Cognitive Science, I collaborated with the Department of Work & Organisational Psychology which worked external to the curriculum itself. My thesis focussed on the "Think aloud" technique in Usability Testing, and in particular which effect its use may have on the performance of participants in a given test scenario.

Abstract:
The widespread use of the think-aloud technique by Usability specialists, researchers and developers has made the need for standardized procedures evident in recent years. Despite the lack of consistency in using any form of the method, think-aloud represents the most frequently applied data gathering method in lab testing. This Bachelor's thesis addresses one debated problem of the concurrent think-aloud technique, interference with user task performance. Standardized instructions and guidelines for the think-aloud procedure were used in an experiment evaluating the differences in completion times of four interaction tasks in an online e-learning platform. Assumptions were made concerning the effect of the respective cognitive processes designed to vary across the tasks on the task completion times.

No significant differences in overall completion time were found between the group asked to simultaneously verbalize and a control group. Users in the think-aloud condition turned out to have an advantage in the most complex task involving long-term memory. An argument is made to exercise care when using speed as a performance measure in think-aloud sessions. Interaction effects between the cognitive processes required for verbalization and those required in the tasks need also be considered

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