I think you are really missing the forest for the trees.
Everything you say is completely correct. But useful? Or worthwhile? Or even efficient?
The goal is not to find out why some users are disoriented and some are not. Well, I guess indirectly it is. But getting there with rigor is a nightmare and to my mind not worthwhile in most cases. The hypothesis developed from the usability test would be “some users are disoriented during checkout”. That to me would be enough evidence to actually tackle that problem of disorientation, especially since to me 3/5 would indicate a relatively strong signal (not in terms of telling me the percentage of users affected by this problem, just that it’s likely the problem affects more than just a couple people).
The more mysterious question to me would actually be whether that disorientation also leads to people not ordering. Which is a plausible assumption – but not trivially answerable for sure. (Usability testing can provide some hints toward answering that question – but task based usability testing is always a bit artificial in its setup.)
Operationalizing “user is disoriented” is a nightmare and not something I would recommend at all (at least not as the first step) if you are reasonably sure that disorientation is a problem (because some users mention it during usability testing) and you can offer plausible solutions (a new design based on best practices and what users told you they think makes them feel disoriented).
Operationalizing something like disorientation is much more fraught with danger (and just operationalizing it in the completely wrong way without even knowing) than identifying a problem and based on reasonableness arguments implementing a potential solution and seeing whether the desired metric improves.
I agree that it would be an awesome research project to actually operationalize disorientation. But worthwhile when supporting actual product teams? Doubtful …
> The more mysterious question to me would actually be whether that disorientation also leads to people not ordering.
This is actually the crucial question. The disorientation is an indication for a fundamental mismatch between the internal model established by the user and the presentation. It may be an issue of the flow of information (users are hesitant, because they realize at this point that this is not about what they thought it may be) or on the usability/design side of things (user has established an operational model, but this is not how it operates). Either way, there's a considerable dissonance, which will probably hurt the product: your presentation does not work for the user, you're not communicating on the same level, and this will be probably perceived as an issue of quality or even fitness for the purpose, maybe even intrigue. (Shouting at the user may provide a superficial fix, but will not address the potential damage.) – Which leads to the question: what is the actual problem and what caused it in the first place? (I'd argue, any serious attempt to operationalize this variable will inevitable lead you towards this much more serious issue. Operationalization is difficult for a reason. If you want tho have a controlled experiment, you must control all your variables – and the attempt to do so may hint you at deeper issues.)
BTW, there's also a potential danger in just taking the articulations of user dislike at face value: a classic trope in TV media research was audiences critizising the outfit of the presenter, while the real issue was a dissonance/mismatch in audio and visual presentation. Not that users could pinpoint this, hence, they would rather blame how the anchor was dressed…
What you say is all true and I actually completely agree with you (and like how you articulate those points – great to read it distilled that way) but at the same time probably not a good idea at all to do in most circumstances.
It is alright to decide that in certain cases you can act with imperfect information.
But to be clear, I actually think there may be situations where pouring a lot of effort into really understanding confusion is confusion. It‘s just very context dependent. (And I think you consistently underrate that progress you can make in understanding confusion or any other thing impacting conversion and use by using qualitative methods.)
Regarding underestimating qualitative methods: I'm actually all for them. It may turn out, it's all you need. (Maybe, a quantitative test will be required to prove your point, but it will probably not contribute much to a solution.) It's really that I think that A/B testing is somewhat overrated. (Especially, since you will probably not really know what you're actually measuring without appropriate preparation, which will provide the heavy lifting already. A/B testing should really be just about whether you can generalize on a solution and the assumptions behind this or not. Using this as a tool for optimization, on the other hand, may be rather dangerous, as it doesn't suggest any relations between your various variables, or the various layers of fixes you apply.)
Everything you say is completely correct. But useful? Or worthwhile? Or even efficient?
The goal is not to find out why some users are disoriented and some are not. Well, I guess indirectly it is. But getting there with rigor is a nightmare and to my mind not worthwhile in most cases. The hypothesis developed from the usability test would be “some users are disoriented during checkout”. That to me would be enough evidence to actually tackle that problem of disorientation, especially since to me 3/5 would indicate a relatively strong signal (not in terms of telling me the percentage of users affected by this problem, just that it’s likely the problem affects more than just a couple people).
The more mysterious question to me would actually be whether that disorientation also leads to people not ordering. Which is a plausible assumption – but not trivially answerable for sure. (Usability testing can provide some hints toward answering that question – but task based usability testing is always a bit artificial in its setup.)
Operationalizing “user is disoriented” is a nightmare and not something I would recommend at all (at least not as the first step) if you are reasonably sure that disorientation is a problem (because some users mention it during usability testing) and you can offer plausible solutions (a new design based on best practices and what users told you they think makes them feel disoriented).
Operationalizing something like disorientation is much more fraught with danger (and just operationalizing it in the completely wrong way without even knowing) than identifying a problem and based on reasonableness arguments implementing a potential solution and seeing whether the desired metric improves.
I agree that it would be an awesome research project to actually operationalize disorientation. But worthwhile when supporting actual product teams? Doubtful …