A proposal for a major retailer who wanted to better understand aspects of users' attitudes and how they related to people's responsiveness to email campaigns.

1. Testing Topics
Integrating Need for Cognition
Need for Cognition (NFC) is a personality characteristic pertaining to how
thought-intensive, or cerebral, people like to get in their daily life. The scale measuring this
characteristic began as a 34-item test, but has since been shortened to 18- and 5-item tests. It
was originally used to evaluate individuals’ responsiveness to persuasive arguments, but has
recently been applied to understanding information foraging behavior, engagement in online
activities, responsiveness to advertisements, and design preferences.
Why Measure NFC?
Because need for cognition has its roots in understanding how individuals respond to
persuasive arguments, it can be thought of as a ‘gateway’ metric. Arguments can be received
through central or peripheral channels. The central channel responds to things like logic and
evidence. Conversely, the peripheral channel responds to an arguer’s personal characteristics
that have nothing to do with the argument, such as physical attractiveness or where he or she
went to college. From this it becomes readily apparent that people will think through things to
different levels. This way of thinking carries over to all aspects of people’s lives.
Behavioral Characteristics Related to NFC
The NFC scale characterizes respondents as either having high NFC, or low NFC.
According to someone’s level of NFC, their behaviors and preferences in the real world and
online are very distinct.
High NFC Characteristics Low NFC Characteristics
Respond to logic and evidence-based
arguments
Respond to personal characteristics of the arguer
(physical appearance, perceived personality
traits, professional/educational background)
Will engage in research to understand
important aspects of things
Take arguments at face value or with little debate
at all
Difficult to dissuade or enact a change in
opinion
Can appear ‘wishy-washy’ at times and lacking in
conviction
NFC in User Research

2. Functional Prototypes
Research at this point uses prototypes whose functionalities of interest are fully operable,
and whose content is testable. The goal is to assess the following:
1. User expectations- ​Does the prototype function in a way that helps users complete
tasks as they might have expected?
a. Functionality is covered by the SUS, which has been shown to have some
relationship with NFC.
b. Analysis: Regression, looking for direct correlation.
2. Perception- ​With more functional prototypes, the amount of available subjective ratings
increases. To that end, the following data needs to be captured:
a. Attractiveness- How visually appealing the design is found to be. To be
meaningful with respect to NFC, it has to be a scale that can be scored or at
least provide trends that can be matched to directionality of NFC scores.
3. Effectiveness- ​Participants’ ability to complete tasks on the prototype.
a. The measure of effectiveness can change depending upon the goals of the
study, but for the most part this will be success/fail data. Binary versus multi-level
success data will depend upon the overall tasks and study.
4. Efficiency- ​How well participants complete tasks on a prototype.
a. Efficiency is typically measured through time on task. However, an acceptable
alternative would be an effort-based measure, like click ratio (number of clicks
taken to complete a task versus number of clicks taken to complete the task
optimally).
Hypotheses Relating to NFC
H​0​: NFC will account for some of the relationship between attractiveness and the SUS score.
H​1​: NFC will directly correlate to attractiveness.
H​2​: Effectiveness will vary with NFC.
H​3​: Efficiency will vary with NFC.
Research Goals
The purpose of collecting each piece of data mentioned above is two-fold. First, there is a
need to paint an adequate picture of the evolution of the MML site that includes both subjective
and objective data points. Seeing as the user experience is influenced partly by what users think
of the site (looks fun and fresh versus unoriginal and unengaging), it is important to track changes
in those thoughts and opinions, and how they relate to
1. Increase understanding of the MML user groups by gaining insight into how they like to
approach activities, and what that means for design and information content currently and
going forward.

3. Static Prototypes
Research at this stage centers around a design before it has any functionality. At this
point most of the collected feedback will be:
1. Perception​- Using an adjective test (such as the one used by Janie for the services
sites), ask participants to choose three adjectives to describe the design they saw.
Choose the adjectives related to the brand according to this same paradigm.
a. Qualitative data more easily understood through frequency analyses
2. User expectations​- Do participants expect portions of the design to behave in ways that
match the actual functionality? Will sections linked to from the newly designed page
actually contain what participants expect them to contain?
a. This data will be qualitative data. Ex.: “What information would you expect to see
if you clicked on this link?”
Hypotheses Relating to NFC
Most of this data will be qualitative, so NFC scores will be cast in the light of which trends
they relate to, and then how design and future developments can be geared toward working with
that information. The one exception to this might be brand alignment, which could be a set of
7-point Likert scales.
Possible Attractiveness Scale #1
Please mark an ‘X’ at the point on the scale to indicate how close to a particular attribute you
think this website is.
This website is…
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Unattractive Attractive
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Ugly Beautiful
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Boring Interesting
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Plain Eyecatching
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Typical Unique

4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Harsh Pleasing
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Cluttered Streamlined
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Complex Simple
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Unoriginal Innovative
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Dull Fresh
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Complex Simple
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Unappealing Appealing
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Uncreative Inventive