Dear David and all,
I promise that I will not write again under this thread.
I am proposing a hypothetical design problem. Let’s say, we are tasked with designing an app that will help kids to learn reading and writing. And suppose we are designing something that will supplement the education in classroom (so not a substitute). I am guessing, one metric to measure here can be speed: How fast the students come to a satisfactory point in terms of reading and writing. Also suppose that we know, on average kids in school x, learn reading and writing in 9 months (I just made this up) without any app. Let’s say the kids who use the app learned reading/writing in 8 months, on average. Is our app really working? Is it the design of the app or is it something else in those classrooms?
There are a multitude of factors that may affect the way kids learn reading and writing (gender, being a minority , problems at home, quality of teachers, peer effects, age in months etc.), and our design intervention here, is just one among these many things. Even the fact that they are using a new digital thing might make kids spend more time working on reading and writing. But then this is a placebo effect, it is not our design per se. I cannot envision any scenario that excludes using statistics in this example, albeit very simple tests, nothing fancy. With this many different possible sources of variations, five or ten participants will never help us to understand the role of the app and its design here.
My two cents,
Ali
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