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Usability and User Interface Design: Click To Edit Master Subtitle Style
Usability and User Interface Design: Click To Edit Master Subtitle Style
What is Usability?
Ease of learning
Ease of use
Ease of remembering
Subjective satisfaction
Efficiency of use
Effectiveness of use
Usability Engineering
Developers believe
it takes too long
is too expensive
is not critical to development
they can afford to learn about user problems
during “live” use
Also developers may not know how to
do it
Benefits of UE to an Organization
A team includes
Analyst
Designer
Technology expert
Graphic artist
Social and behavioral scientist
Programmer
Basic Principles
Assume users
Have not read the manual
Have not attended training
Do not have external help readily at hand
So…
All controls should be clear and understandable and
placed in an intuitive location on the screen.
Usability Design Process
Use Scenario Development
Storyboard
HTML Prototype
Language Prototype
Interface Evaluation
Heuristic
Walkthrough
Interactive
Formal Usability Testing
Creating a UI Prototype
See:
http://www.stcsig.org/usability/topics/articles/h
e-checklist.html
User in control
Consistency
Personalization & Customization
Forgiveness
Feedback
Aesthetics & Usability
User in Control
How many
groups are
there in this
image?
How do you
know?
Symmetry: Law of Proximity
What do the
radio buttons
apply to?
How do you
know?
Symmetry: Law of Proximity
What do you
see in the
image to the
right?
What is it
really?
Color Example
Exercise – Part 3
Choose three more scenarios for your web-site
based on your use cases.
Create a prototype (paper, HTML, Visio, …) for
these scenarios and walk through them.
Ensure that your GUI has enough detail that a user
can walk through the entire process.
This may involve creating several “snapshots” of your
screen designs in different states
Save your work!!!!!
Ten Golden Usability Rules
A great set of guidelines created by Jakob Nielsen in
his book Usability Engineering.
http://www.sapdesignguild.org/communit
y/design/golden_rules.asp
Usability Testing
To identify problems
Typical users perform typical tasks
Collect data
Objective: Task times, error rates
Subjective: Ratings, Comments, Observations
Analyze data to identify usability
problems
Testing Your Application
Introduction
Informed consent form
Training
Tasks
Questionnaire
Debriefing/Payment
Think-aloud Approach
Analyze data
Identify usability problems AND
SOLUTIONS
Identify problem severity
Identify software bugs (maybe)
Conduct second round of testing (if
necessary) and if time/resources permit
Caveats
1.Hassenzahl, M. (2003).
The thing and I: understanding the relationship bet
ween user and product
, chapter 3, pages 31-42. Kluwer Academic Publishe
rs.
2. Formalising usability as part of ISO
standards