1. Needs and Usability Assessment

2. 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

3. Needs and Usability Assessment Understanding Users and Their Work –To inform design and evaluation Evaluation –Of a design, prototype, or working system –Not a clean distinction between design and evaluation –Iterative Classic problem: usability experts brought in late in design process to “improve usability”

4. What is usability? Nielsen:

5. What is usability? CHI 2002 Norman: should be about people, not interfaces. –What needs are we trying to fill? –Experience, not interfaces. –“Experience design,” “interaction design”: coining a phrase >> immediate misuse –We’re about helping people cope with technology Nielsen: commitment is to users; making life easier for users. Focus has been cognitive; needs to include aesthetics –Pleasant things work better

6. What is usability CHI 2002 II Card –Not human-computer interaction but human- information interaction –Called for more fundamental theoretical work Shneiderman –Focus on service provided to users, not theories –45% of users’ time wasted –Designers are blind to larger social questions (e.g., cars)

7. What is usability, CHI III Goals –Reducing user frustration –Increasing users’ ability to learn –Increasing engagement – so that people want to use your system

8. Usability and HCI: what skills, characteristics needed? Skills from many disciplines: design, business, education. –CS skills > jobs Different roles, different routes. Be expert in SOME discipline. Know about tools of sociology and anthro, especially rapid ethnography. User testing

9. Interaction Design From: The Inmates are Running the Asylum, Alan Cooper Today, programmers design the "code" but only inadvertently design the interaction with humans. They design what it does but not how it behaves, communicates, or informs. Interaction designers focus on the way users see and interact with software-based products. Programmers’ frame of reference is themselves, so they make it easy to use for other software engineers, not for normal human beings. Costs of badly designed software are incalculable. While we let our products frustrate, cost, confuse, irritate, and kill us, we are not taking advantage of the promise of software-based products: to be the most human, powerful & pleasurable creations ever imagined.

10. Usability Methods MethodNeedsEvaluation User and task analysis x Ethnographic methods x Observation, interviews x x Contextual inquiry& design x Universal usability x x Usability inspection– heuristics, guidelines x x Surveys, interviews, focus gps x x Usability testing x Server log analysis x

11. Some Considerations in Choosing Methods Stage in the design/implementation process What you already know, need to know –What difference will it make? Justification needed to make your argument Resources available Timeline

12. User and Task Analysis Can’t ask “how good?” without asking “For whom and for what purpose?” Users –Whom do you need to include? How many? –Categorizing users –Getting people’s cooperation Tasks –Identifying & describing the tasks they (currently) perform –Technology design is work re-design –Practice vs. process User-task matrix

13. Tools Scenarios Personae Cautions: base on understanding of users, not stereotypes

14. Configuring the User Design incorporates assumptions about users and their tasks Design process includes: coming to a shared understanding of expected users Design allocates tasks between the system/application and the user

15. Field methods Methods and principles of social science research are fundamental to collecting, analyzing, interpreting data for needs and usability assessment 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)

16. 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!

17. 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

18. Evaluation Methods Focus: what is being investigated? –User needs vs. system performance Who does the assessment? –Users (or proxies) vs. experts Bases –Tasks Actual (uncontrolled) or experimental (controlled) –Guidelines, standards Standard or customized Setting: controlled, unnatural vs. natural

19. Expert evaluation: Usability inspection methods A variety of methods that consist of experts (not users) inspecting (not using) a design, prototype, or system Methods: –Competitive evaluation: against competitors –Heuristic evaluation: using set of heuristics –Standards and guidelines Advantages: –Easy –Lots of information with not much investment –Reflects short-term use; limited depth.

20. Heuristics 1.General http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_list.html 2.Domain-specific – e.g., e-commerce 3.Specifics developed from testing own application

21. Tools Low-fi prototypes Heuristics, guidelines, standards Scenarios, personae

22. Users: 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)

23. Users: Surveys Useful for collecting data directly from users at various stages of design and development –Descriptive info: demographics, activities –Needs –Satisfaction Can reach a large number of users Standardized questions, answers easy to analyze Issues of sample composition & 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

24. Users: Focus Groups A directed discussion within a homogeneous group –Major method in marketing Useful at many stages in process –Activities, needs –Response to prototypes, working applications In-depth information from users Interaction among users helpful (or sometimes not) Limits: –small numbers –limited time period –effects of strong personalities, sidetrack in the conversation Skilled facilitator! Hard to do well, easy to mess up

25. 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

26. Organizational and Managerial Issues

27. Who is on the UCD Team? -Kevin McBride, IBM UCD Project Leader Total User Experience Leader Visual Designer User Assistance Architect Technology Architect Human-Computer Interaction Designer Marketing Specialist Service/Support Specialist Internationalization & Terminology User Research Specialist

28. 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? –The leap from understanding to design How do you present your findings succinctly and clearly, in a way that your audience will understand and use?

29. Ethics Do no harm to the people you are studying Choices of projects?

30. Managing usability How usability fits into organizations “We don’t get no respect” First laid off? Reasons for lack of respect? –Usability specialists good at critique But people don’t want to hear it Have to have something positive to contribute not just critique –Who has the power? Marketing? Designers? –Lack of theoretical foundations

31. Some final questions How do we understand users’ activities, needs, interpretations, & preferences? –Especially for things that don’t yet exist –Users and uses are varied –People can’t 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