Topic – Usability Evaluation

Topic – Usability Evaluation

Objectives

Understand the different types of analyzing system usability.

Prerequisites

This is one of the most important of all the lectures. Where you actually have to evaluate the usability of a design. It makes up the basis of most of your assignments – a good understanding of the users (parts I and II) is important to mastering this topic.

Summary

An excellent overview of all usability evaluation methods is at http://www.usabilityfirst.com/usability-methods

This lecture contains coverage of usability principles and usability specifications. The usability evaluation methods that you are responsible for are;

  1. Heuristic Evaluation – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic_evaluation
  2. Cognitive Walk-through – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_walkthrough
  3. User and Task Observation – https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/how-to-conduct-user-observations
  4. Severity ratings – https://measuringu.com/rating-severity/
  5. Scenarios – https://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/scenarios.html

The basic principles of UI evaluation which are;

  1. Learnability – https://measuringu.com/measure-learnability/
  2. Flexibility
  3. Robustness

Video

Reference Materials

Usability Evaluation.pptx – Powerpoint lecture of the video.

You should have at least a basic familiarity with the basic usability evaluation methods available. A simple list of these is available at http://www.usabilityfirst.com/usability-methods

You should have experience conducting these three primary and often used evaluation methods

  1. Heuristic Evaluation – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic_evaluation
  2. Cognitive Walk-through – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_walkthrough (A great example of a CW format – http://www.carincamen.com/img/hci/cognitive02.png )
  3. User and Task Observation – https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/how-to-conduct-user-observations

Here is some excellent documentation from Carin Carmen consulting on the usability evaluation – http://www.carincamen.com/

Additional Information

 

 

 

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