Temporal Aspects of Usability

I know, I know, it seems like the topic has changed every week. But this one is sticking for sure. It’s simply too late to change now.

Basically, I’m going to be exploring the ways that micro-blogging can help improve the timeliness of support for quitting smokers in online communities. I will be guided in my investigation by Fabre et al.’s (2000) theory of the dimensions of the Temporal Aspects of usability: duration, location, frequency and contingency.

I will conduct a trial that will involve the participants using twitter for a fortnight. Participants will be groups of 3 or 4 that have had some interaction with each other within the QuitNet online community. Through observing their feeds, I will be able to see the frequency and context of posts between the participants as the use twitter to assist them in quitting smoking.

References

Fabre, J. (2000). Designing time at the user interface. Behaviour & Information Technology, 19(6), 451-463.