I would argue that Nvivo uses the Microsoft model, which on the whole is only intuitive if you use Microsoft based software regularly. Those that have moved to the latest office, find it less so. What is intuitive is built into the design... and user interface... it is a package that is designed from the ground up to deal with a particular type of data. Thus Transana works well with video, because it is designed to deal with video. Nvivo tries to deal with it, just as it tries to deal with PDF's but does not do it as well in my opinion. It is also constrained in design because it is meant to do something else, it merely tips the hat to video. Would anyone like to run thousands of hours of video in Nvivo. 

Also Nvivo is not a great team player unlike Transana, which is designed with that in mind.

What is clear is that both packages have their uses, but like a pair of pliers will remove a nut, a spanner will do the job better, quicker and with less hassle. This is where the researcher must weigh up learning the skills to use the correct tool. Who said a researchers life was going to be easy


Paul gD
Dr Paul G Dempster
Research Fellow
Centre for Health and Social Care
Leeds Institute of Health Sciences
Charles Thackrah Building
Room 202
101 Clarendon Road
LS2 9LJ 


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0113 3430858



-----Original Message-----
From: qual-software [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Mike Mellody
Sent: 02 February 2010 05:21
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: NVivo 8 Training and Consulting

On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 10:57 PM, Ross Perkins <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Any claim of "intuitiveness" is highly subjective .. If one has previously
> used NVivo (say, v. 7), then its interface is more "intutive" than
> Transana's or any other. Personally, I find Atlas.ti's UI to be convoluted,
> but I am sure it is simply because I have not spent enough time with it.

This is disingenuous. If Atlas.ti's UI wasn't convoluted, you wouldn't
need to spend "enough time" with it. "intuitiveness" is, I believe,
simply a measure of how easily a computer-literate user can find his
way around a program for the first time without needing the user
manual. It's a measure, firstly, of how well the programmers have
adhered to the de facto standards that have been developed for ease of
use and, secondly, whether the program is laid out in such a way that
the most commonly-used program-specific functions are presented to the
user along short, logical and readily apparent paths. Microsoft's
standards, for example, for making programs easy and "intuitive" to
use, are irritatingly prescriptive but the result is uniformity and
ease of use.

Transana meets these criteria; neither NVivo or Atlas.ti do.

My own introduction to statistics, for example, was via Statistica 4.
I'd never used a statistics program before, but I was able to install
the program, enter data and carry out simple statistical calculations
without needing the user manual. The very limited help I needed was
available by pressing F1 and reading the well-laid-out help files.
There can be few people who could say the same about NVivo or
Atlas.ti. I certainly couldn't.

Your comment about "get[ting] used to the [NVivo] terminology" is
revealing. If the program was 'intuitive", you wouldn't need to get
used to the terminology, because the terminology would already be
familiar, either from experience with other (non-QDA) software or
because it conforms to standard QDA usage.



Mike
Michael Mellody

Ecclesia Knowledge Management