This
paper presents a contextual inquiry into how a graduate student uses Microsoft
Word for writing dissertations and reports. A graduate student has different
needs from an office worker but Microsoft Word is used almost by everybody. The
contextual interview with this graduate student revealed some interesting facts
about how graduate students work.
Microsoft
Word was originally designed to be used in the office environment but is now
used by almost everybody in all kinds of fields. Even in academia, we are
seeing entire departments starting to embrace Microsoft Word as their
word-processor of choice. This is of interest to me as I know of people who
swear by LaTeX (a hard-to-use Unix program used for typesetting many academic
textbooks) for writing dissertations. I interviewed a graduate student who has
used Microsoft Word for writing his PhD dissertation, to find out what graduate
students need in their work, and if Microsoft Word does in fact fulfill these
needs.
I
interviewed a friend who is a fellow Masters student in Computer Science, but
who also happens to have a PhD in BioChemistry from UCLA. He used MS Word for
his dissertations so I think he is very suitable for finding out how a graduate
student uses MS Word for his work.
I
interviewed my friend in his home, in front of his computer, so that I can see
his setup and he can show me what he usually do with the program. I prepared a
list of things I wanted to ask him about, but it was still a very free-form
interview, and I get side-tracked often from my initial list. We were chatting
over tea so it was extremely informal.
A
desktop PC running MS Word 97.
It
is very surprising to find out how such a long-time user of Microsoft Word
doesn’t know the various features in the application, and how many of those
features he can get by without. This perhaps demonstrates a different class of
“expert” users – not those who know the ins-and-outs of every obscure feature,
but those who can achieve the same results with a very limited feature set.
From
a usability perspective, the study revealed that many features are not needed
and therefore it is good that they are optional and not always on-screen.
However, hiding these features can also result in the user never learning about
them. Either the user doesn’t even realize the features exist even though he
wish they do, or he gets by with what he already knows, making these features
redundant. My friend doesn’t know about the various settings he can apply to
pictures. He simply drags them to the locations he wants.
My
friend doesn’t know that MS Word can be customized. An extremely useful
customization for him would be to set the default font size to 12 points
instead of 10. All the papers he writes are in 12-point font size.
In
contrast, visible UI controls are never used. There are all those pushbuttons
on the vertical and horizontal scroll bars that neither I nor my friend knew
what they are. The same goes for the “tab change” button in top-left corner
where the rulers meet. My friend has never used styles before even though the
pull-down menu is sitting right beside where he changes the font.
As
for the conceptual model, my friend calls “margins” as “borders”. And he
doesn’t know what the various indents are called, because he already knows how
to use the buttons on the rulers to adjust them. This suggests that the rulers
are a good thing (provided the user knows about them) because they provide a
direct manipulation interface and does away with the need for a possibly
conflicting terminology.
From
a contextual perspective, the biggest problem for graduate students using
Microsoft Word is the need for the capability to layout lots of graphics and
tables easily in a report spanning hundreds of pages. My friend has to
reposition all the graphics again when the text changes, so he works around
that by adding the graphics only at the very end, after he is done with all the
text and the formatting, but that is not a fool-proof solution, because
last-minute changes are often required. I mentioned LaTeX because I know it
that the users of this hard-to-use software (I know at least three, in various
departments) never have to worry about where their figures are, but it is used
mainly by departments with a strong tradition of Unix usage, and therefore not
used everywhere. Graphical layout is never one of the strong points of
Microsoft Word, and although it is supposed to a word-processor rather than a
desktop publishing software, this is definitely an area to improve on. I’ve
heard of arguments that say MS Word shouldn’t even be trying to do graphics
layout in the first place, but I think that there is a real need to do it
because of the requirements of certain groups of users such as graduate
students. However, this is a difficult problem for which I don’t have a good
solution yet.
Microsoft
Office integration appears to be a very good thing to have. My friend embeds
Excel spreadsheets into his papers. It’s too bad that he doesn’t remember what
problems he had because that knowing them would have been of extreme benefit.
Also
interesting is the fact that my friend prints out the paper to look for errors
instead of relying on the on-screen display. I don’t think this is peculiar to
graduate students only. This is often one of the main criticisms of
What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) interfaces. Nobody trusts the display,
preferring instead to waste lots of paper checking the hardcopy versions. I
have no idea how this problem can be solved.
The
interview was in an extremely free-form format. I drew up a set of questions I
wanted to ask him, but some didn’t apply to his experiences. Also, other
questions arose in the middle of the interview because of certain things he
mentioned, so things get a little disorganized. Overall, I think that the
contextual inquiry is much more beneficial and enlightening than a standard
usability interview, because a usability interview is concerned with whether
the features are usable, but will not reveal some of the more specific
requirements of the user. For example, I probably wouldn’t have found out that
some dissertations can be hundred of pages long and linked that to the problems
with inserting pictures in the document if I was simply interested in finding
out if the user knows how to insert a picture.
Contextual
inquiry suffers from the same problems as interviews, in that you totally
depend on the interviewee’s memory. Sometimes, problems are mentioned but no
further details can be gathered because it was currently out-of-context. In
this respect, ethnographical methods would have been much more useful, but they
take a lot more time to do. I think contextual inquiry is a very useful tool
for identifying problem areas that actually
matters to the user for further usability testing.
I
interviewed only one person, and so this study is not representative of all
graduate students in general. Differences probably exist between different
fields, so a wider and larger sample should be interviewed to see what common
needs there are and what specific needs are peculiar to each field. This study
shows only how Microsoft Word does not really address the needs of one graduate
student.
1. How long
have you been using MS Word?
About
5 years, since Windows 3.1. However, I
haven’t been using it this quarter. I’m more familiar with Word 95. I’m using
Word 97 right now.
2. Do you use
it often?
Yes,
quite often.
3. What do you
use it for? What features do you often use?
I
use it for writing reports (as a student). I wrote my dissertations and papers
in MS Word when I was a PhD student at UCLA. I use a lot of tables, figures,
and equations in my reports.
4. Equations?
What do you think of that feature?
I
used it long ago. I don’t know how to use it now. It’s not very useable. There
are some mathematical symbols which are hard to find. And it’s tedious to enter
the formulae with it.
5. But have you
used other equation editors before? Other word processors? What about LaTeX? I
know several CS students who use that for writing their theses.
No,
I haven’t used any other equation editors before, so I can’t compare. I have
not used any other word processors before. I’ve never heard of LaTeX. My
department uses only MS Word.
6. How long are
the papers you usually write?
Most
are more than 10 pages. My PhD dissertation was a few hundred pages long,
because of all the figures and tables I have to include.
7. Wow, that is
a lot of pages. What about font size? Justification? Single- or double-
spacing?
I
use 12 pt font size for most of the text, double-spaced with full
justification.
8. Let me see
your default settings for MS Word. I notice your font size setting is still MS
Word’s default of 10 pt. So you didn’t change it?
No.
I don’t know how to change it. I just change the font size every time I write a
paper.
9. You mentioned
you use figures. What kind of figures? Where do you get them from?
They
are mostly in GIF format. I cut-and-paste them Photoshop.
10. Cut-and-paste?
I didn’t know that is possible. So you don’t “insert-picture-from-file” from
the menu? (showed him where it is)
No.
I just cut-and-paste.
11. What kinds
of problems do you experience when working with pictures?
I
just drag them around to the right locations.
12. Don’t you
ever have to change their parameters? You know, like whether you want character
or paragraph anchoring, text-wrapping, etc. Do you know how to do all these?
No,
I’m not aware of how to do these things. I just drag the pictures around, and I
don’t need to adjust anything. However, when I add more text, the pictures will
move around again, and I’ll have to move them around again manually.
13. What? All of
the few hundred pages of pictures?
Yes.
What we usually do is to insert the pictures at the very end, after we have
written all the text.
14. That’s
interesting. What about tables? How do you insert them?
I
just “insert table” from the menu.
15. But you
don’t do it any other way?
No.
Is there another way?
16. Do you use
MS Word in a maximized window? Do you do anything else at the same time?
Yes,
I run it maximized. Sometimes I have to refer to what’s in my Internet browser,
then I’ll run the two programs in two windows side-by-side.
17. You don’t
listen to MP3s?
No.
18. Do you use
MS Word’s integration features with other MS apps? You know, such as Excel,
Powerpoint, etc.
Yes,
I’ve used Excel spreadsheets quite often in the past.
19. Did you
encounter any problems with them?
I
can’t remember. I think there were some problems but I can’t recall what
exactly. I think it had to do with printing.
20. Do you
preview your paper before you print?
Sometimes.
I seldom preview.
21. I notice
here that you are using the “page layout” view, so you do have some idea of how
the page will look when printed. But how do you know it will look the way you
want when printed? Is the screen display accurate?
No,
the screen display is not always accurate. I just print the pages, and then
I’ll correct them again.
22. How do you
print? From the menu, or from the toolbar?
I’ve
used both before, but usually I use the menu.
23. Do you know
the difference between the two?
No,
I’ve never noticed. What’s the difference?
24. The menu
brings up a dialog box. The one on the toolbar prints directly without asking
for confirmation.
Hmm,
I’ve never noticed it before.
25. It seems to
me that you don’t customize your MS Word. I notice that the toolbars and page
settings are all MS Word’s defaults. Do you customize any settings at all?
No.
I don’t know how to customize Word.
26. Are you
familiar with what’s on the screen? Have you used these before?
(I
pointed to various parts of the screen. He has never used the style pull-down
menu, never used the toolbar items that open up new toolbars. He has used the
zoom pull-down menu, increase/decrease indents, text color, and he knows how to
use the rulers. However, he doesn’t know what the “tab-change” icon at the top-left
corner of the rulers is for (and neither do I). He has never noticed before the
small icons on the vertical and horizontal scrollbars. And he has looked at the
status bar before.)
27. So you know
how to use the little buttons on the rulers. What do you use them for?
To
change the borders. (note: the correct
term should be “margins” or “indents”)
28. Do you know
what is a hanging indent?
No.
29. What about
columns? Many papers I’ve seen are written into two columns. Can you show me
how you do it?
I
never used them. That’s the editor’s responsibility. He will do the layout
before printing.
30. That’s
interesting. So you don’t really know how your papers will eventually look?
No.
We just have to make sure that all the pictures and tables are in the correct
places, and the text have the correct formatting. The editor will do the
layout.
31. Do you use
style sheets or styles for formatting the text? Do you use the AutoFormat
feature?
No,
I don’t know about it, what are they?
32. You use them
to set a consistent font size and font for the text, and whether you want them
bold or underlined, etc.
No,
I do all the formatting manually.
33. What about
templates then? Is there a template you can use for dissertations and reports?
There’s a resume template you can use to write your resume.
No,
I’ve never used them. (Expressed some interest when I showed him where they
are, and started trying out various resume templates. There are no templates
for dissertations on his computer though)
34. Let’s look
at the help features. How did you learn how to use MS Word? Do you read any
manuals or books?
No,
I don’t read any manuals or books. I just ask my friends or experiment with
things myself.
35. When you
don’t know how to do something, do you use the help system?
Yes,
I use the index search which the fastest for me. But if I don’t know what I’m
looking for I use the help contents.
36. What about
the Office Assistant?
Never.
I don’t like the Office Assistant. I think it’s irritating.
37. Do you know
how to permanently shut it off?
No.
I just keeping closing it until it doesn’t bother me anymore. But sometimes it
still pops up.
38. Is there
anything that you think is particularly bad in MS Word?
I
can’t really think of anything right now. One thing I have a problem doing is
in aligning the text using spaces or tabs. I know how to use the indents but
sometimes I need to have two columns of text like in my resume and I want to
align the second column. The tabs are not accurate and the text will shift
around when I change the font size. I have to edit it all over again.
39. I had the
same problem too. What about the good points of MS Word?
I
like its auto-save feature. My PC keeps crashing so it’s good that I don’t lose
all my work when it crashes.
40. Well, thank
you for letting me conduct this interview. I’ve learned quite a lot from this
session.