Microsoft Windows XP Operating System: Usability Study
David Worthington BetaNews, Inc.
Professor James E. Tomlinson, Department of Communication Studies, Bloomsburg University.
October 8, 2001

Bloomsburg University students were recruited for this research from communication classes. Student volunteers were randomly divided into two groups: Group 1 was asked to complete a series of 30 tasks using the Windows 98 Operating System. Group 2 was asked to complete the same series of tasks using the new Windows XP Operating System. Students were assembled in a Bloomsburg University Computer Lab, the Windows 98 Group separately from Windows XP Group. This research was conducted between September 27 and October 4, 2001.

As instructions for each item were given to participants, words were carefully selected so as to not ‘tip off’ research subjects as to how they might do each task. For example, rather than tell participants to ‘shut down the computer,’ they were told ‘you are done using your computer for the day and don’t want to leave it on overnight. Please do what is necessary to do so.’

Participants were asked to ‘rate’ each assigned item as to its ‘ease of use,’ on a scale from 1 to 7 (where 1 means ‘very difficult’ and 7 means ‘very easy’). Thus, for the purposes of this study, ‘ease of usability’ is defined as a higher number in the scores reported by the research participants. Data reported below are organized by task and provides the following information:

• the Mean (average) responses for each group
  
• the Range of responses for each group
  
• the Mode (the most frequent responses) for each group
  
• any demonstrated ‘Advantage’ for either of the Operating Systems

A brief narrative evaluation of the data follows the presentation of data for each item.

This report is divides the 30 task items used in the study into five sections:

I Functionality
II Managing Audio Files 
III Managing Digital Photography
IV Networking
V Conclusions

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