IS214 Recap

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IS214 Recap
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IS214

• Understanding Users and Their Work
• User and task analysis
• Ethnographic methods
• Site visits observation, interviews
• Contextual inquiry and design
• Universal usability
• Evaluating
• Usability inspection methods including
  heuristics, guidelines
• Surveys, interviews, focus groups
• Usability testing
• Server log analysis
• Organizational and Managerial Issues
• Ethics Managing usability

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Methods assessing needs, evaluating
Method Needs Evaluation
User and task analysis x
Ethnographic methods x
Observation, interviews x x
Contextual inquiry design x
Universal usability x x
Usability inspectionheuristics, guidelines x x
Surveys, interviews, focus gps x x
Usability testing x
Server log analysis x
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Intro to usability and UCD

• Usability concepts
• Usability as more than interface
• Functionality, content, and design
• User-Centered Design
• Usability begins with design
• At every stage in the design process, usability
  means using appropriate methods to perform
  user-based evaluation
• Placing users (not cool technology or) at the
  center of design
• Iterative design

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Understanding Users and Their Work

• To inform design evaluation

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User and Task Analysis

• Cant ask how good is this? without asking for
  whom and for what purpose?
• Users
• Selecting users whom do you need to include? How
  many?
• Categorizing users
• Getting peoples cooperation
• Trust
• Tasks
• Identifying describing the tasks they
  (currently) perform
• Technology design is work re-design
• User-task matrix

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Ethnographic methods

• Methods and principles of social science research
  are fundamental to collecting, analyzing,
  interpreting data for needs and usability
  assessment
• Reliability
• Validity
• One set of methods Ethnographic
• Studying users in the wild
• Learning their understanding of their work
  purposes and practices
• Seeing how they actually do their work (as
  opposed to formal work processes)

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Site Visits

• Observing
• Seeing people doing what they do, how they do it,
  under the conditions that they do it
• Asking questions as they work
• Tacit knowledge people may not be able to
  articulate what they do
• Recollection people may not think to mention
  things, or not think them important
• Interviewing
• Getting users understandings and interpretations
• Ability to probe
• Interviewing skills!

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Contextual Inquiry and Design

• A systematic, ethnographically-based method for
• Collecting, interpreting, and summarizing
  information about work practices and
  organizational factors
• Incorporating findings into design
• Structured approach to data collection,
  recording, interpretation
• Complex requires that entire team be trained in
  it

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Evaluating

• A design, prototype, or working system
• Not a clean distinction between design and
  evaluation

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Usability inspection methods

• A variety of methods that consist of experts (not
  users) inspecting (not using) a design,
  prototype, or system
• Including
• Competitive evaluation
• Heuristic evaluation
• Commonly-used method
• Easy
• Lots of information with not much investment
• Reflects short-term use limited depth.

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Surveys

• Useful for collecting data directly from users
  at various stages of design and development
• Can reach a large number of users
• Standardized questions, answer formats easy to
  analyze
• Issues of sample composition, sample size, and
  validity
• Only get answers to the questions you think to
  ask
• Question (and answer) wording affects results
• Lack of depth and follow-up

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Usability testing

• Lab-based tests
• Usually standardized tasks observed under
  controlled conditions
• Good for getting performance data unsullied by
  variations in use conditions
• Bad for getting performance data under real
  conditions of use (ecological validity)

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Focus groups

• Again, useful at many stages in process
• In-depth information from users
• Interaction among users helpful (or sometimes
  not)
• Limits
• small numbers
• limited time period
• effects of strong personalities or a sidetrack in
  the conversation
• Skilled facilitator! Hard to do well, easy to
  mess up

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Server log analysis

• Analyzes data collected automatically
• Large numbers
• Unobtrusive
• Does not rely on use cooperation or memory
• Limits to the data available
• Inferences must be justified by the data

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Organizational and Managerial Issues
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Analyzing and presenting results

• Lots of data that has to be summarized in useful
  form
• What is the purpose of your study?
• What do you know? What do you need to know?
• What recommendations can you develop from your
  data?
• How do you present your findings succintly and
  clearly, in a way that your audience will
  understand and use?

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Ethics

• Do no harm to the people you are studying
• Choices of projects?

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Managing usability

• How usability fits into organizations
• We dont get no respect

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Universal usability

• International usability
• Accessibility
• Removing unnecessary barriers
• Being aware of and designing for the variety of
  peoples capabilities
• Incorporating multimodal information presentation
  and functionality

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Topic we might have covered credibility

• Larger issue when presenting content not (just)
  functionality, need to understand how people use
  and evaluate information
• Factors that affect web site credibility
• Source
• Institutional, personal
• Expertise bias or interest
• Currency (how up to date the info is)
• Observable factors used as indicators of
  unobservable
• Language, (absence of) mistakes
• Links, imprimaturs

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Some final questions

• How do we understand users activities, needs,
  interpretations, preferences?
• Especially for things that dont yet exist
• Users and uses are varied
• People cant always articulate what we would like
  to know from them
• The observer is not a perfectly objective tool
• How do we translate these understandings into
  recommendations and designs?
• How do we decide what trade-offs to make?
• Among users (including organization vs
  individuals)
• Between cost of design and priority of needs