...Design Process and Evaluation • Understand and meet user expectations- there is no process to understand what the user experience is. They may have collected random samples and had them use the website but it would be more efficient to prompt the user to take a random survey during or after they have used the website. They may have this but I was never prompted to take a survey. It would be nice to have an entire section or link to identify problems or make recommendations. • Use Parallel design- although the design of the website is efficient (doesn’t have any flash or glamour) it is a little bland. It has a very “government website” feel to it. If they took multiple website designers opinions and ended up with this product, they chose the wrong website designers. The site could appeal to more users by choosing a more modern layout and color scheme. This site feels like it was created on Windows 95. Optimizing the User Experience • Format the information for reading and printing- when attempting to print a page about one of the nursing homes in my area, I found that there was a lot of fluff in the page. The title bar was far too big, they had the “information” symbol in the printed copy (not needed), hyperlinks where still in the printed copy, and pages were split right in the middle of certain charts. A more universal printing layout would be more ideal for this site. • Provide Assistance to Users- when accessing the website for the first time, I was not prompted to “start...
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...Introduction: How has it that a dream has now become the life and blood of our world’s economy? The internet has grown from a twinkle in our eye to an everyday commodity. We use the internet when we leave our house with our Smartphone’s, iDevice’s, and device’s in our vehicles. As the expectations from the users increase the developers have to meet those expectations. If a company does not meet the needs of the users, then the user will become impatient and go elsewhere. We designers need to keep the design up-to-date to keep the interest of the users there; content also needs to be current. Constant testing is a must for any website, with the constant changing languages, and programs. Layout is another item that needs to be updated continuously. I could go on, but below is the break-down of ten of the rules for website navigation: 1 – Design: This need to be something that has to up-to-date, interesting, and appealing to the users. To get this process started we need to imagine and/or draw our final projects design. This includes, but not limited to, the potential of the site, how many pages the site will have. This will need to be accomplished to succeed with all the alternatives there are out there on the web. So to succeed there will need to be input from several sources and have them evaluated for the best choice to use. This will show us the users’ opinions, wants, and needs that will make your site stand out amongst the others. Performance should be the number one thing...
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...Applying Usability Concepts Project Report Executive Summary Following our contextual design project, for the purposes of recruitment, we have prototyped the interview screens in the iPad application. More importantly, the mobility gained by the use of AnyBot amplifies the benefits of the application as a whole as well. We have attempted to use technologies and apply Norman’s concepts on usability to produce an interview session as close as possible to the natural way of interviewing another person. Selected Focus Areas from project “Recruitment Tool – Intelliview” We have selected the following 2 focus areas from our contextual design project to prototype for usability purposes: Focus Area#1: Record Answers & Ratings (for a specific question) 1. (Interviewer) Select a question, and ask the candidate 2. (Candidate) Answer question using the AnyBot 3. (Interviewer) Enters a summary of the candidates answer in the iPad 4. (Interviewer) Enters a rating of the candidates answer in the iPad for the particular question 5. (Interviewer) Select next question from list, to ask the next question 6. (Interviewer) Select Add new question to record a colleague’s question Focus Area#2: Add questions from colleagues 1. (Interviewer) Adds a new question one of the colleagues asked the candidate, driving the AnyBot to the iPad application 2. (Interviewer) Add answers and rating to the new question in the iPad application 3. (Interviewer) Select next question from list...
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...Running Head: USABLE SECURITY THE IMPLEMENTATION Usable Security the Implementation Name Institution Abstract This project was about usability security and its implementation. It involved the designing and development of a suitable human computer interface to provide a log on module for the Kuwait armed forces computer system. The development focused on relieving the user from the load of creating, remembering and maintaining their passwords for the login process. Based on the fact that the Kuwait information and communication technology literacy levels are still in their infancy stage, the conventional authentication system was proved unfriendly to the user. This system was developed with this in mind. This proposed system relies on the user logging in to the system after identifying five pictures they uploaded earlier from among a grid of twenty five pictures. By selecting the five correct pictures which they uploaded, the system was able to successfully authenticate the user. Using these pictures greatly reduced the mental load on a user who was required to remember strong passwords that ended up being compromised (Badre 2002). The use of pictures or graphical images for authentication or access control is a practice called biometrics that is gaining popularity in establishing system security today. Due to the need to deliver a solution in the shortest time possible the...
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...Usability testing is a technique used in user-centered interaction design to evaluate a product by testing it on users. This can be seen as an irreplaceable usability practice, since it gives direct input on how real users use the system.[1] This is in contrast with usability inspection methods where experts use different methods to evaluate a user interface without involving users. Usability testing focuses on measuring a human-made product's capacity to meet its intended purpose. Examples of products that commonly benefit from usability testing are foods, consumer products, web sites or web applications, computer interfaces, documents, and devices. Usability testing measures the usability, or ease of use, of a specific object or set of objects, whereas general human-computer interaction studies attempt to formulate universal principles. History of usability testing Henry Dreyfuss in the late 1940s contracted to design the state rooms for the twin ocean liners "Independence" and "Constitution." He built eight prototype staterooms and installed them in a warehouse. He then brought in a series of travelers to "live" in the rooms for a short time, bringing with them all items they would normally take when cruising. His people were able to discover over time, for example, if there was space for large steamer trunks, if light switches needed to be added beside the beds to prevent injury, etc., before hundreds of state rooms had been built into the ship.[2] A Xerox Palo...
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...Usability of iPads and Websites Name Professor Course Date The tablet market is growing at a high rate, the iPad being the best selling in this segment. The iPad has many uses such as; streaming videos, playing games and surfing the internet. However its usability has come under critics from several parties. The purpose of this research is to evaluate the usability of the iPad from a consumer stand point. In 2011, the Nielsen Norman conducted a research on the usability of the iPad, and published a report. A total of 26 apps and 6 websites were tested. Many apps which the participants had installed on their iPads were also tested. Sixteen users participated in the research who were evenly distributed in terms of gender. Their average age ranged between 21 years and 50 years. The tests included; the usage of gestures, implementation of the back buttons, and the organization of the app or website. The findings of the tests were; usage of splash screens in websites and apps, squeezing of information into very small areas, making it hard to recognize, usage of excessive navigation methods and over usage of the swipe gesture in the apps. Despite the efforts being made by the developers to make iPad apps and websites more usable, there is still a large room for improvement as indicated by the test findings. The use of gestures is an inconsistent interaction design as described by Nielsen. The user interface differing from app to app is the most frequent inconsistency he...
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...Mobile Usability Jakob Nielsen and Raluca Budiu New Riders 1249 Eighth Street Berkeley, CA 94710 Find us on the Web at www.newriders.com To report errors, please send a note to errata@peachpit.com New Riders is an imprint of Peachpit, a division of Pearson Education. Copyright © 2013 by The Nielsen Norman Group Senior Editor: Susan Rimerman Copy Editor: Anne Marie Walker Proofer: Emily K. Wolman Indexer: James Minkin Production Editor: Tracey Croom Composition: Danielle Foster Cover Design: Peachpit Press Notice of Rights All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For information on getting permission for reprints and excerpts, contact permissions@peachpit.com. Notice of Liability The information in this book is distributed on an “As Is” basis, without warranty. While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of the book, neither the authors nor Peachpit shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the instructions contained in this book or by the computer software and hardware products described in it. Trademarks Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and Peachpit was aware of...
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...Paid Website Usability Testers Kazi Ziaul Islam Strayer University Human Computer Interaction CIS375 Prof. Kourosh Samia December 8, 2014 Paid Website Usability Testers Two attributes determine if a website is useful and they are usability and utility. Utility is whether or not the website provides the required information or features. Whereas, “usability is a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use.” (Nielsen, 2012, para. 1) You cannot have one without the other. Suppose your site is brimming to the top with lots of information and has all the bells and whistles, but if the Interface design (ID) is poor and as a result the User Experience (UX) suffers then no one is ever going to spend the time and effort to discover those great features. This is the main reason why companies must perform usability evaluation. Although the heuristic evaluation method may take less time and is usually less expensive, the “heuristic evaluators could not play the role of real users and could not predict actual problems users might face while interacting with the sites” (Hasan, Morris, & Proberts, 2012, p. 726) User Testing is essential prior to going live in a production environment and can done on a budget. Katie Sherwin of the Nielsen Norman Group reiterates that “testing doesn’t have to be expensive and by testing with just 5 users, you can uncover 85% of the issues.” (Sherwin, 2014, para. 8) After all it is an iterative process and the law...
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...Qianying Liu, Niven Sellars, Michael Somer | Subject: | Usability Testing Findings Report for Chinese Holiday Inn website | Date: | April 25, 2008 | Included with this memo is team CBR China’s final report for our research project on the Holiday Inn’s Chinese website. The following are included within this report: * Project purpose * Goals set by Team CBR China * Processes followed during the project * Heuristic review * Test plan * Recruitment and screening * Real-time logging * Analysis * Categorized results and findings * Recommendations In addition to the aforementioned items included in this report, team CBR China also includes appendices of our test logs, participant consent forms, screeners, questionnaires, scenarios, and other materials in support of testing. Other research components include the team’s heuristic evaluation, personas, and test plan. Team CBR China would like to extend its gratitude to our sponsor, Karen Bennett, as well as our instructor Dr. Carol Barnum, who has assisted us throughout this project. Without both of you we would not have had the chance to engage in a real world usability experience. Thank you again, The members of team CBR China Table of Contents Executive Summary 3 Test Objective 3 Our Process 4 Our Results 4 Background 5 Report Overview 6 Methodology 7 Overview 7 User Profiles 7 Usability Criteria 8 Test Objectives 9 Findings and Recommendations...
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...2.2 Usability Evaluation Techniques 2.2.1 Pluralistic Usability Walkthrough The Pluralistic Walkthrough (also called a Participatory Design Review, User-Centred Walkthrough, Storyboarding, Table-Topping, or Group Walkthrough) is a usability inspection method used to identify usability issues in a piece of software or website in an effort to create a maximally usable human-computer interface. The method centres on using a group of users, developers and usability professionals to step through a task scenario, discussing usability issues associated with dialog elements involved in the scenario steps. There are however limitations due to this technique being only as quick as the slowest person in the group. 2.2.2 Heuristic Evaluation A heuristic evaluation is a usability inspection method for computer software that...
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...Analyzing the results of Usability Testing By Ben Homrig and Justin Stephenson For our presentation, we were assigned with analyzing the results of usability testing. Usability is defined as the process or technique used to interactively test and assess the user-interface of a product, method or set of instructions. Presenting and analyzing data are very important steps in process. The improvements developers and technical writers make with their data define exactly how the end product will be when completed. Understanding the differences in the types of data tabulated is vital to understanding how results are analyzed. In usability testing, there are two types of data – qualitative and quantitative. Quantitative research must measure the products in an objective, quantitative and statistically valid way. This type of data recorded must be hard evidence, free of context and exact. Qualitative data is collecting, analyzing and interpreting data by observing how people respond through their opinions and actions. Data is generally collected through gathering information from focus groups and in-depth interviews with users. Quantitative research is defined as objective, while qualitative is subjective. The differences between qualitative and quantitative data are very important in improving a product, method or set of instructions. In our case, we established our primary example as that of a tester documenting the experience a user has while trying out a new iPhone game application...
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...“Usability is the ease of use and learnability of a human-made object. The object of use can be a software application, website, book, tool, machine, process, or anything a human interacts with.” (Definitions for Usability, n.d) In order for a website to be successful the navigation is a key element. If a user cannot find their way around a site easily, they will find one that they can. Keeping things consistent is very important. Site navigation needs to appear in the same location on every page of a site. Using the same style, type and colors makes it comfortable for a user to browse, it is also important to make text easy to read, never use distracting flashing or animations. Users want to know where they are at all times when browsing, they also want to where they can go, users cannot go somewhere if they do not know how to get there, and they also want to know where they have been. In my own usage of websites the most important thing is color. I hate when things are too “much.” By that I mean way to many colors and designs it is distracting and so hard to follow, I loose interest real fast and move on. A color scheme should contain 2 or 3 primary colors that blend well and create a proper mood or tone. (Does Your Website Have What It Takes? , 2012) One thing that I have noticed with all of the information out there is that mobile sites are the worst. Since I spend most of my time on my phone I like the sites that are easy to...
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...weite-re, in der Praxis weit verbreitete Methode zur Erhebung und Dokumentation des Pro-bandenverhaltens beim Usability-Test. Beide Methoden können selbstverständlich auch kombiniert werden. Nach Mackay /18/ ist der Einsatz von Videoaufzeichnungen bei Be-nutzertests ein unverzichtbarer Bestandteil zur detaillierten, minutiösen Erforschung der Mensch-Maschine-Kommunikation auf dem Gebiet der Interaktionsforschung. Methoden der Usability Evaluation Allgemeines Unter der Erhebungsmethode der Videoanalyse versteht man die Dokumentation des Probandenverhaltens beim Usability-Test unter Einsatz einer oder mehrerer Kameras. In einer Studie /68/ zum Vergleich der Ausstattung von 13 industriell betriebenen Usabi-lity-Labs lag der Durchschnitt der eingesetzten Kameras pro Labor bei 2,2. Werden zwei oder mehr Kameras eingesetzt, dienen diese meist dazu, Detailaufnah-men des Gesichts oder der Hände des Probanden aufzunehmen. Die Protokollierung der Aufgabenbearbeitung der Probanden durch den Testleiter wird durch die Aufzeichnung auf Videoband erheblich erleichtert. < Allgemeines zur Anwendung Nielsen /23/ schätzt die Zeit für eine detaillierte Auswertung von Videoaufzeichnungen beim Usability-Test auf das Drei- bis Zehnfache der Zeit, die für die eigentliche Aufga-benbearbeitung durch den Probanden benötigt wird. Das Videofeedback findet anschließend an den eigentlichen Usability-Test statt. Testlei-ter und Proband sichten gemeinsam das Videomaterial nach kritischen und unklaren Stellen...
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...information, links, and uninviting designs. In addition, they often have physiological conditions that limit their ability to read, follow, and navigate websites. To enhance the online experience for their older adult audience (and increase the chances of gaining their business), companies must make their websites as usable and accessible as possible. While this would seem obvious, it’s widely believed that changing design features on behalf of older adults (using a more readable font, scaling the type size and increasing the contrast, and reformatting the text) compromises the experience for younger generations. This paper addresses this common misconception—and examines research clearly suggesting that changing your website to improve usability and accessibility for older adults actually improves the...
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...Introduction to UX Design What is User Experience? Why does it matter? User Experience (UX) the overall experience of a person using a product such as a website or computer application, especially in terms of how easy or pleasing it is to use. Why it matters... CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING SCENARIOS 1. The accident: The accident on the road happened because the driver took his eyes off the road for a moment to turn the radio down. He had to look down because it was impossible to identify which was the volume control by touch alone. Why it matters... 2. The register: The line at the register in the gas station moved so slowly because the cash register was complex and confusing, and unless the clerk paid extra-close attention while ringing something up, he would make a mistake and have to start all over again. If the register had been simpler and the layout and colors of the buttons different, that line never would have formed. Why it matters... 3. The coffeemaker: The coffeemaker didn’t make coffee because you didn’t push down the power button all the way. The machine doesn’t do anything to let you know that it has been turned on: no light, no sound, no resistance you can feel when the button makes contact. You thought you had turned it on, but you were wrong. The problem could have been avoided altogether if you had set the coffeemaker to start brewing automatically first thing in the morning, but you never learned how to use that...
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