Product Evaluation of Three Competing Document Production Devices

Abstract

Three competing document production devices were evaluated in terms of ease of learning and ease of use. Forty temporary office workers were hired to learn each device and then perform 16 identical exercises on each machine. After each exercise, the subjects were to rate the features assessed in that exercise along several seven-point rating scales anchored on either “Easy to Do” - “Hard to Do” or “Easy to Remember” - “Hard to Remember.” After completing these exercises on each of the devices, the subjects were then asked to perform six additional exercises on the machines and to compare and rank them.

Data consisted of subjective ratings from the exercises, the times required to complete each of the exercises, and the subjective rankings of the machines. Analyses of variance of the subjective ratings identified 78 out of 160 factors by which to distinguish the devices. These subjective factors were supported by an analysis of variance of the time data. Nonparametric analysis of variance of the subjective rankings of the devices identified an additional 23 out of 26 features by which the devices reliably differed.