1. Welcome to COMP5427 Usability Engineering
Judy Kay (co-ordinator)
Bob Kummerfeld

2. School of Information Technologies
OHS INDUCTION
School of Information Technologies

3. OHS INDUCTION Emergency Procedures & Evacuation
Check for any sign of immediate danger
Shut down equipment
Follow exit signs in orderly fashion, to assembly areas, as indicated by wardens
Do not use lifts
Emergency contact numbers
Dial (from internal phone) and University Security on
First aid kit available in kitchen area adjacent to Lab 110 in SIT Building.

4. OHS INDUCTION General Housekeeping Use of Labs
Keep work area clean and orderly
Remove trip hazards around desk area
No food and drink near machines
No smoking permitted within University buildings
Do not unplug or move equipment without permission

5. OHS INDUCTION WHS Contacts for School of IT
First aid officer in SIT Building is Will Calleja (1West)
Chief fire warden in SIT Building is Greg Ryan (1 East)
Nearest medical facility – University Health Service in Level 3, Wentworth Building
Report incidents to:
Katie Yang (Undergraduate),
Cecille Faraizi (Postgraduate),
Shari Lee (School Manager),

6. Pragmatics http://comp5427.usydhci.info/ Labs start week 2 Short tour:
Notes:
Course schedule cumulative
Weekly homework presented in lectures
Readings (balanced to fit other work and topics)

7. The teaching team Judy Kay Bob Kummerfeld Thushan Ganegedara
Computer Human Adapted Interaction Group
Research: personalisation, surface computing, technology for education, lifelong learning, health and wellness
Room 307, School of IT Building, J12
Phone:
Bob Kummerfeld
Research: architectures for user modelling and pervasive computing systems
Room 310, School of IT Building, J12
Phone:
Thushan Ganegedara
PhD student

8. Some examples of our research

9. Textbook Hartson and Pyla Very long and wordy
Designer perspective
Extensive search….
Big book but don’t fear….
Electronic?
Best experience so far on ipad - DL Reader, also tried Bluefire  web version 
Very long and wordy
Do not fear!
Reduces cross referencing
More useful as reference
We focus on HCI broader view (cf. Usability Engineering)
Focus on required readings
About the textbook
We will also use other readings for depth in the various forms of usability engineering

10. Class activity What do you expect to learn in this subject?
What would you like to learn in this subject and why?
What are the most relevant skills you bring to this subject?
Why does all this matter?

11. What is usability?

12. What is usability?
“Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design?
Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks?
Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they reestablish proficiency?
Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors?
Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design?”
Usability 101: Introduction to Usability
by Jakob Nielsen on January 4, 2012

13. Utility
Usability and utility are equally important and together determine whether something is useful”
Easy but useless?
Hard, but potentially valuable?
“Definition: Utility = whether it provides the features you need.
Definition: Usability = how easy & pleasant these features are to use.
Definition: Useful = usability + utility.”
Usability 101: Introduction to Usability
by Jakob Nielsen on January 4, 2012

14. User “Experience” (UX)
Even more than “usability”
Usability focuses on performance
User Experience
Emotion, Heritage
Fun, Style, Art
Branding, Reputation
Political, social personal connections
Beyond just the device itself – “Service Design”
Blends: usability engineering, software engineering, ergonomics, hardware engineering, marketing, graphic design
© Brad Myers

15. User experience goals Desirable aspects satisfying helpful fun
enjoyable motivating provocative
engaging challenging surprising
pleasurable enhancing sociability rewarding
exciting supporting creativity emotionally fulfilling
entertaining cognitively stimulating
Undesirable aspects
boring unpleasant
frustrating patronizing
making one feel guilty making one feel stupid
annoying cutesy
childish gimmicky 15 15

16. Usability engineering….
Systematic ways to tackle the task of creating usable interfaces
Methods
Theory
How to apply them
A process (p49 H&P)
A checklist (in the hands of an expert)
Builds upon science
Research studies
Psychology
Builds upon practitioner research and experience

17. Some Usability Methods
Contextual Inquiry
Contextual Analysis (Design)
Paper prototypes
Think-aloud protocols
Heuristic Evaluation
Affinity diagrams (WAAD)
Personas
Wizard of Oz
Task analysis
Cognitive Walkthrough
KLM and GOMS (CogTool)
Video prototyping
Body storming
Expert interviews
A vs. B studies
Questionnaires
Surveys
Interaction Relabeling
Log analysis
Focus groups
Card sorting
Diary studies
Improvisation
Use cases
Scenarios
Cognitive Dimensions
“Speed Dating” …
© Brad Myers

18. And yet this is also Command line WIMP NUI Do you use this much?
If so why, or why not?
WIMP
What is this?
NUI
What is it?

19. Command line …. NUI How deeply different are these?
What are the implications for the world you will encounter/create?
For usability engineering?

20. User experience vs. usability
The text treats user experience as additional to usability
Usability still essential
It treats usability is part of user experience
Usability is pragmatic component
H&P aims to provide a broad foundation for all of these aspects
We will consider all the them, but focus on classic usability

21. What makes it hard to create usable interfaces that provide a delightful user experience?

22. It is hard to think like the users
May need to understand the domain
And the context of use
And what the user knows
And what they have experienced
And how they will interpret the interface elements, what they will “see”

23. Specifications are always wrong
"Only slightly more than 30% of the code developed in application software development ever gets used as intended by end-users. The reason for this statistic may be a result of developers not understanding what their users need."
-- Hugh Beyer and Karen Holtzblatt, "Contextual Design: A Customer-Centric Approach to Systems Design,“ ACM Interactions, Sep+Oct, 1997, iv.5, p. 62.
© Brad Myers

24. More reasons why it is difficult….
Tasks and domains are complex
Word 1 (100 commands) vs. Word 2013 (>2000)
MacDraw 1 vs. Illustrator
BMW iDrive adjusts over 700 functions
Existing theories and guidelines are not sufficient
Too specific and/or too general
Standard does not address all issues.
Adding graphics can make worse
Pretty  Easy to use
Can’t just copy other designs
Legal issues
© Brad Myers

25. More reasons why it is difficult….
All UI design involves tradeoffs:
Standards (style guides, related products)
Graphic design (artistic)
Technical writing (Documentation)
Internationalization
Performance
Multiple platforms (hardware, browsers, etc.)
High-level and low-level details
External factors (social issues)
Legal issues
Time to develop and test (“time to market”)
© Brad Myers

26. Summary so far Defining usability And usability engineering
And aspects the text treats as additional to usability
Reasons it is hard to design usable interfaces

27. The assignment This will run through the first half of the semester inspiring and driving the learning
Electronic text books, and other e-books, have the potential to provide a very valuable way for people to learn.
We will study the usability of e-books, with a particular focus on the class text.

28. Live demonstration of online text
Hartson and Pyla, The UX Book: Process and Guidelines for Ensuring a Quality User Experience. Elsevier, 2012.

29. Preliminary class activity
What are the particular potential advantages of an e-textbook?
What are the particular potential disadvantages?
What are the “tasks” that a person needs to do when then use an e-textbook?

30. Homework Auto-ethnography: First step into more typical ethnography:
Identify 3 important tasks you want to be able to do when you read an e-textbook. Use a post-it note to write each task
Read the parts of the class text, using an electronic version of the book
Try to do the tasks above
Write a set of post-it notes about the experience: what went well, not so well, delightful….
First step into more typical ethnography:
Ask a friend to repeat these three tasks (on just a small part of the text)
Record this too (put the details on a set of post-its, put
 on ones that matched your experience,
# for ones that did not
Write a draft concept statement for an e-textbook interface (see next slide)
Bring all the above to the next class

31. System Concept Statement (H&P:96-7)
100 – 150 words
Mission statement for the system
Needs care and we will refine it during the next class
See example in the text
Important for this stage and because we will refer to this example through the semester
States the following
System name
Target users
What the system is intended to do
The problems the system should solve
Aspects of the user experience

32. Overview of the approach
H&P Chapter 2: The Wheel
2.2,pp53-5

33. H&P Chapter 2, p53

34. H&P Chapter 2, p54

35. Mapping project parameters to process choices
Copyright MKP. All rights reserved.
H&P Chapter 2, p63

36. The system complexity space
Copyright MKP. All rights reserved.
H&P Chapter 2, p65

37. H&P Chapter 2, p673-4

38. Key outcomes – answers to:
What is usability?
What else matters?
What is usability engineering?
Design versus science versus engineering
What are the four key elements? Who are the professionals who focus on each?
Why is it hard to create usable interaction?
The iterative processes to address this to engineer usable systems:
Why the processes are needed?
How heavy weight, according to the complexity?
Who does which parts
The challenge of seeing the process in terms of the users…..

39. What is usability engineering?
Hartson and Pyla:
1.3: From usability to user experience
, pp 9-12,
1.3.9 pp 19-21

40. Readings Getting to the science you need to know
And the processes for doing HCI science that links with engineering

41. Reading for Week 2: Usable security
Akhawe, D., & Felt, A. P. (2013, August). Alice in Warningland: A Large-Scale Field Study of Browser Security Warning Effectiveness. In Usenix Security (pp ).
What to do for next week:
Read the paper
Download CMapTools
Create a concept map that makes use of ~20 of the most important concepts
Bring your map to class
[Be ready to store it on your group’s BitBucket site]

42. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concept_map

43. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concept_map

44. Homework summary Auto-ethnography More authentic ethnography
Bring post-its
Tasks
Your own experiences
Others’
Reading on usable security