Overview

Most Web sites are used more than once. They continue to be useful to their customers over periods of months or years. People's use of a product and their relationship to it change with time. They grow accustomed to how it works; they learn what to focus on and what to ignore; and while their understanding of it deepens, they develop habits with it. If all goes well, loyalty and comfort increase rather than resentment and frustration.

In nearly all cases, you want people to get comfortable with your product and learn its more subtle facets. However, in order for the product to support long-term use, the development team should know how and when people's relationship to it and understanding of it changes. Most of the techniques in this book are not designed to support such understanding. They give an understanding of people's experience right now, a point on the curve. Knowing a point on the curve is valuable, but it doesn't define the curve. Knowing the shape of the curve can help you predict what people will want and help you design an appropriate way to experience it.

Thus you need techniques that help you understand the behavior and attitude changes that appear over time and the patterns embedded within those changes.

At first, the solution to this seems pretty straightforward: once you've recruited users one time, just invite them back on a regular basis and observe how their use and their views change. Unfortunately, it's not...