Talk:Think aloud protocol

This should be called "think aloud", not "talk aloud".


 * I agree. Think aloud also gets a lot more Google hits so I moved it. Angela. 05:00, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)

Please provide a fuller citation for Lewis C. and Rieman J. (1994), Task Centered User Interface Design : a Practical Introduction It appears that originally "Original files for the book are available via anonymous ftp from ftp.cs.colorado.edu" per http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&q=cache:C3xoKI9lI-cJ:www.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~saul/hci_topics/papers/LewisRiemanBook/+Lewis+C.+and+Rieman+J.+(1994),+Task+Centered+User+Interface+Design+:+a+Practical+Introduction which also says "SHAREWARE NOTICE:

The suggested shareware fee for this book is $5.00, payable to Clayton Lewis and John Rieman. Send it to:

Clayton Lewis and John Rieman P.O.Box 1543 Boulder, CO 80306 USA." Wow! http://hcibib.org/tcuid/ appears to be one modern location. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 148.85.216.50 (talk • contribs) 18:13, 13 October 2006

Moved from article: Recent research
Recent reserarch suggests the Think aloud protocol may cause users to adapt their behaviour when searching Google. The Heat Map images below show a similar pattern of users concentrating on a Golden Triangle or F Pattern.

A similar Golden Triangle or F Pattern was noted in a recent study comparing Think Aloud with Post experience eyetracked protocol.

(I moved the above from the article for discussion. The author has a clear WP:COI and all his edits to date have been promotional.  As this is newly published research, it probably does not belong per WP:NPOV and WP:OR.  Additionally, the eyetools.com reference is not a reliable source and the useit.com ref is questionable.) --Ronz 17:41, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Start of TAPs
I noticed this article says that TAPs were developed by Clayton Lewis - I'm not sure whether this means Clayton Lewis devised TAPs from scratch or if he took something that already existed and worked on it a bit. In the following article concerning the use of TAPs in translation studies, it appears that TAPs began in psychology in the 1930s. Does anyone know any more about this? http://www.erudit.org/revue/TTR/1995/v8/n1/037201ar.pdf Jammycaketin (talk) 10:37, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Also, shouldn't this article be added to the 'psychology' portal in some way, since it is primarily a psychological research method that happens to have been applied in a variety of other fields? Jammycaketin (talk) 10:46, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Ericsson and Simon's 1993 publication of "Verbal Reports as Data", on pg. 261, reports "The earliest documented analysis of a think-aloud protocol of which we are aware was made by Watson (1920)". —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jason242 (talk • contribs) 06:23, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Think Aloud Developer Error?
I found this article while researching Think Alouds for a graduate course in education. My question regards this statement, "The think-aloud method was developed by Clayton Lewis[citation needed] while he was at IBM, and is explained in Task-Centered User Interface Design: A Practical Introduction by C. Lewis and J. Rieman. The method was further refined by Ericsson & Simon (1980, 1987, 1993)."

Actually Ericsson & Simon published their Think Aloud research in 1980. "In collaboration with Herbert Simon he proposed a model of the processes involved in verbalization of sequences of thought and showed how some verbal report requirements, such as generations of explanation, have reactive effects on the studied cognitive processes whereas other reporting procedures, such as think-aloud and retrospective reports, valid data on thought processes. This work was initially published in Psychological Review (Ericsson & Simon, 1980) and then expanded into a book "Protocol Analysis: Verbal Reports as Data" (Ericsson & Simon, 1984) which was subsequently revised (Ericsson & Simon, 1993)." http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.hp.html

While it seems that Clayton Lewis published his Think Aloud research beginning in 1985. "John D. Gould, Clayton Lewis, Designing for usability: key principles and what designers think, Communications of the ACM, v.28 n.3, p.300-311, March 1985[doi>10.1145/3166.3170]" http://hcibib.org/tcuid/ Does anyone know of prior publications by Clayton Lewis that would make Ericsson and Simon the refiners of the Think Aloud Method and not the other way around?

75.186.134.135 (talk) 14:12, 9 June 2009 (UTC)Valerie


 * I also found this article when I was doing research for an essay on Think Aloud Protocols, but in Translation Studies. I very much doubt that Clayton Lewis can claim to have come up with the idea (although, admittedly, the word 'developed' is pretty vague and doesn't necessarily mean he was the first to use TAPs, just that he worked with TAPs). In fact, this whole article seems to talk about TAPs as if it's mainly used in software development, which isn't the case. TAPs is primarily a psychological research method and happens to have been applied to a range of different fields, one of which is IT. I'm sure you're right that Ericsson and Simon probably started TAPs - they claim to have been the first to develop complete instructions for using ‘thinking aloud’ (Ericsson, K.A. & Simon, H.A. (1987). ‘Verbal Reports on Thinking’. In: Faerch, C. & Kasper, G. (eds.), Introspection in Second Language Research (pp.37). Clevedon & Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters). I would find it very hard to believe that E&S took the TAPs idea from software development, particularly considering that introspective methods already existed in psychology in the 1930s. Do E&S include Clayton Lewis in any of their bibliographies? Jammycaketin (talk) 20:53, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

I also found this article while doing research. I doubt it very much that Lewis was the inventor of TAP's for usability Engineering. I have User-centered Website development: a human-computer interaction approach by McCracken & Wolfe, Interaction Design: beyhond human-computer interaction by Sharp, Rogers & Preece in front of me, and they both call Erickson the creator of TAP for UE. I guess it's time to remove that awkward statement from the page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.215.38.73 (talk) 20:50, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

A book
In 1994, with two colleagues, I wrote a book on the Think Aloud Method. This is no longer in press but freely available from http://staff.science.uva.nl/~maarten/Think-aloud-method.pdf. This includes a section on the history which actually dates back to the 1940's. The part of the book on obtaining the think aloud data is still valid, I think, but computer technology has resulted in many new types of applications and tools for analysing the think aloud data. M.vsomeren (talk) 13:52, 26 August 2009 (UTC)