Novices testing interfaces that only experts will use

One of the sad ironies of my research (at least at this point) is that experts are an expensive, limited resource, and novices are readily available. So, which would you pick? We have a few strategies in mind to in a way get a little more than just novice results, but the stuff that will be viewed as statistically significant will be done by novices.

The sadness for me in this case comes from the view-dependent control I talked about in my previous post. I mentioned a hybrid joint control/end effector control that is not view-dependent, as it seems to most people that the view-dependence was confusing. People who had a bit more experience with working in a 3D world on a 2D screen seemed to like it more, but that's just anecdotal, and I might just be hoping. I certainly like it better. It's my impression that people would perform better with the view-dependent control after a bit of training time (like, a couple hours, not a couple minutes).

Now, I'm talking about the control type I used for the first user study, where two separate joysticks are used. The single-joystick view-dependent control was just plain confusing with head tracking. With two sticks, one is view-dependent, and the other is always up/down. That's my favorite configuration so far, but I understand the system pretty well, and I'm designing to my preferences.

The answers to these questions really can only be found through science and testing. I really need to keep moving!