How do you classify someone as having “high” tech savviness versus “low” tech-savviness?

A valid measure of tech savviness helps researchers better differentiate between individual abilities (which isn’t typically a research focus) and problems in an interface (usually the focus of research).

We will present the results of research that started in 2015 to identify and validate a tech savviness measure. We started with three possible approaches based on what people know, what people say they do, and what people feel. After conducting numerous empirical investigations, we focused on evaluating what people say they do with technical activity checklists (TAC). Our investigations included Rasch analysis to refine the metric, predictive validation (explaining 22% of the variation in task completion rates), and empirical classification into two to three levels of tech savviness. Attendees will learn how to use this measure of tech-savviness in practical UX research.