Short excerpts | Week #5 & Week #6

 This is the final post in Short excerpts series. This series will be used as a reference.

Usability evaluation

    After designing we evaluate what we have done 

    Why evaluate ? to get feedback

    Making sure we are getting the design right 

Evaluation techniques 

    Expert appraisal , user involved techniques

    Cognitive walkthrough + Heuristic evaluation

Usability inspection methods 

    Experts are better testers if they have domain knowledge (if they understand the topic), or we may train developers to be             testers.

Usability inspection methods:

•  Guideline review 
•  Standard inspection
• Checklists
•  Cognitive walkthrough 
• Heuristic evaluation 

((and more importantly))

• Cognitive walkthrough 
• Heuristic evaluation 

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Guideline review 

Check against available guideline 

Developer.gnome.org/hig/stable 

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Standard inspection

Defined after research sometimes 

can be internal developer standards or internal clients standard external industrial standards or international standards ..etc 

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Checklists

How do we do the previous ? via Checklist

Download Gnome interface checklist 

pass/failed

+ quick and cheep

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Cognitive walkthrough 

Start with TA , task analyses =sequence if steps required by user to accomplish aa task ) then designers and developers walk through the steps , data gathered then compiled to report of potential issues 

HTA , hierarchal task analyses  (imagine yourself the user )

Streamlined walkthrough

+

• Can be done without first hand access to users 
• Quick and inexpensive 

-

•  People getting defensive about their design 
• The value of the data limited by the skills of the evaluators 

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Heuristic evaluation

Rule of thumb : every day simple to remember measure 

sets of general all purpose guidelines for good interface practice (Heuristic/rule of thumb)

3 Evaluator in number of sessions inspect an interface and compare with a list of usability principles (heuristics) 

Nielson and Shneiderman heuristics

- Can be subjective as there is no users involvements 

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Usability evaluation || (that involves users)

Focus groups , users trials , usability labs

 

Usability lab evaluation 

• Efficiency = time to complete a set of tasks 
• Effectiveness= how many errors were made in completing the task 

SUMI (software usability measurement inventory)

• Eye tracking : Eye movement believed to be linked to cognitive processing \ mental workload
• Number of fixation : the more fixation the harder user is working to find something on screen  
• fixation duration: longer a fixations indicate difficult interpreting 
• scan path: area of interest 
• pupil dilation : can indicate something of users emotional state or mood 

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Physiological measurements 

    Inferring emotional states 

    Heart activity relation to stress and anger 

• Very intrusive 
• Sweat glands (GSR) measured by skin resistance (linked to arousal  and mental effort) 
• EMG = electrical activity of muscle (involvement in a task)
• EEG= electrical activity of the brain , decision making attention and motivation 

Usability lab - weighing  costs 

+ can collect objective controlled data describing usability 

- usability lab labour intensive time consuming 

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Observational studies 

    Research in the wild 

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Cooperative Evaluation 

• Think aloud technique 
• Actionable insight 
• Difficult for users to keep talking during their task 
• simple and powerful 
• User actively encouraged to critique 

Cooperative Evaluation process 

• Recruit users ( pay for them) 
• prepare tasks 
• interact recording
• debrief 

• BE AWARE OF THAT YOU RECORD THE SETTING 
• Emphasise that you are testing the prototype not the user 
• keep it casual and informal 

Note each occurrence of unexpected behaviour 

Debrief before they leave  ( the users) 

Cooperative Evaluation simple and powerful technique to get qualitative information from users trials 

you can do it in lab setting or in the wild 

Digital civics 

• HCI for digital civics 
• smart cities 
• Does technology consider factors of good life such as education and health 

• Smarter citizens rather than smart cities ( focus on human ) 
• What is the role of hci research  ?
• Translational models (break down problems to lab-sized research)

• Taking human centred design approach to developing digital support for 4 civic goods ( education, health , social care and public participation)

UX and sustainability (visiting lecturer )

5 layers of UX ( abstract to concrete) 

• Surface 
• skeleton 
• Structure 
• Scope 
• Strategy 

useful = usability + utility 

UX designer toolkit 

• conceptual model : How we can use the product ( you look it understand immediately how to use it ) 
• Visual indicators ( product have labels)
• Mapping (you understand what this button there for like play /stop  ) 
• Knowledge in the world (like users know how to use the keyboard) 
• Knowledge in the head ( give the user the information that he can easily correlate)

urbanobservatory.ac.uk

howbusyistoon.com

• Educational technology
• Human-agent centred interaction 

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