About the study
The Everyday Services Study is a 15-minute, anonymous online research study about how people experience everyday digital services. You try three simulated tasks — sending a bank transfer, booking a medical appointment, and renewing a driver's license — then answer short questions. Nothing is real: no money moves, no appointments are booked, and no personal data is collected.
What the study investigates
Most usability research asks whether people can finish a task. This study asks something narrower and less commonly measured: whether people can explain what just happened to them.
Those two things come apart more often than you would expect. Someone can complete a bank transfer correctly, see a confirmation, and still be unable to say when the money will arrive or whether it can be cancelled. The task succeeded. The understanding did not.
The gap between what a system did and what the person thinks it did is called cognitive distance, and this study measures it directly rather than inferring it from satisfaction scores.
Why everyday services
Banking, healthcare and government services are where misunderstanding is most costly. These are not apps people can abandon when they get confusing. A misread confirmation screen can mean a missed appointment, a late payment, or an expired licence.
They are also close to universal. Almost everyone has moved money, booked an appointment, or renewed a document, which makes them unusually good ground for research that runs across countries and languages at once.
The versions used here are simulated. No money moves, no appointment is booked, and no real record is touched — which means the study can observe how people interpret these systems without any consequence for getting it wrong.
What taking part contributes
Cognitive distance was introduced as a conceptual framework. A framework that is never tested stays an opinion, so this study exists to give it evidence, and every completed session is part of that evidence base.
Participation takes about fifteen minutes. There is no sign-up, no payment, and no way for the study to identify you: no name, no email, no IP address in the research dataset. At the end you choose whether your anonymous answers are kept or deleted.
Results are reported only in aggregate, and will be published once data collection closes.
Who runs it
The study is academic HCI research, conducted internationally and reported in aggregate. It is not a commercial usability test, it is not a product trial, and no company is paying for a particular result.
If you have questions about how your data is handled, the privacy page sets out exactly what is collected and what is not, along with a contact address.