That makes a lot more sense, since the Summartive Evaluation can inform changes in the way next year’s cohort of students is to be taught (or next round, or whenever it is to be taught to a new group) - so even if you can’t do anything about the last cohort, you can fix it for the next. Whereas the way it’s been presented in this post for Product Design and “ideas”—the cast has been set already forever.
(Note: the parent comment was originally asking about formative evaluations.)
Whereas the way it’s been presented in this post for Product Design and “ideas”—the cast has been set already forever.
No… this is definitely untrue for product design! That’s the whole point! Formative evaluations are done before anything has been set forever! You do formative evaluations at the beginning of the product development process (and then continuously, throughout the rest of said process).
I really do urge you to follow the link to the NN Group’s article about formative vs. summative evaluations in usability engineering. This is not some sort of utopian, hypothetical, pie-in-the-sky proposal that I’m describing here—it’s how things are in fact done, routinely, in many, many companies and organizations and project teams. (The idea of the “minimum viable product” is a related one. Likewise mockups, proofs of concept, etc.—there are many versions of basically the same idea, and such practices are ubiquitous in effective teams and organizations.)
It might be worth noting that the formative/summative distinction originated in educational theory and is widely used by schoolteachers.
That makes a lot more sense, since the Summartive Evaluation can inform changes in the way next year’s cohort of students is to be taught (or next round, or whenever it is to be taught to a new group) - so even if you can’t do anything about the last cohort, you can fix it for the next. Whereas the way it’s been presented in this post for Product Design and “ideas”—the cast has been set already forever.
(Note: the parent comment was originally asking about formative evaluations.)
No… this is definitely untrue for product design! That’s the whole point! Formative evaluations are done before anything has been set forever! You do formative evaluations at the beginning of the product development process (and then continuously, throughout the rest of said process).
I really do urge you to follow the link to the NN Group’s article about formative vs. summative evaluations in usability engineering. This is not some sort of utopian, hypothetical, pie-in-the-sky proposal that I’m describing here—it’s how things are in fact done, routinely, in many, many companies and organizations and project teams. (The idea of the “minimum viable product” is a related one. Likewise mockups, proofs of concept, etc.—there are many versions of basically the same idea, and such practices are ubiquitous in effective teams and organizations.)
Sorry I got confused, will fix, I meant “Summarative”—the one that comes after the school year is over or near the end.
Right… well… I do also explain in the post what summative evaluations are for (and why their usefulness is limited, although definitely not zero).