Usability Engineering

Usability Engineering

Tutorial: Week 4

Discussion topics (think about in your own time)

Ethical issues

• What are your ethical obligations when conducting usability testing?

• What ethical issues do you need to consider in terms of data collection, use and storage?

• What ethical obligations do you have towards the treatment of a user?

• Video: who and how should the video be consumed?

Writing tasks

• What are some of the characteristics of a good task?

Facilitating

• What are the characteristics/skills a good facilitator should have?

Task 1 – Choose users and design screeners Consider website you’ve chosen for Assignment 1 Part 2 and:

• Brainstorm and write down the key users for your website

• Compile a list of questions that would help a recruiter screen for the right users

• Discuss your questions with another team

Task 2 – Templates and usability documentation

• Check out templates for usability documentation. Some sources are: o https://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/resources/templates.html o http://www.sensible.com/downloads-rsme.html which is the book website for Rocket Surgery

Made Easy by Steve Krug

• Locate the SUS online and look at https://measuringu.com/sus/

Task 3- Task Analysis and Scenario Writing

Part 1

• Identify testing goals, objectives and user profiles for your chosen website

Tutorial learning objectives

Through participating in this tutorial you should learn:

• Ethics - be aware of the ethical considerations required in usability testing

• Usability testing - know what it is and the different types

• Usability testing documents – be aware and understand the purpose of the following documents: o Proposal

o Research Plan

o Recruiter/participant pack

▪ Recruitment screener

• Facilitators’ script

• Consent form

• Writing tasks and scenarios

Part 2

Write tasks and develop scenarios for each of the tasks. You will need to consider the following questions for

each of your tasks:

• How does it help answer the goal / objective?

• Why does the user need to perform the task?

• Is the task reliant on any other tasks?

• How long will it take for the user to perform the task?

• How might the user try to complete the task?

• Does the computer/website/application need to be at a certain starting point before the task can begin?

• How will you know that the task has been completed successfully? How will you measure it?

Tasks can be documented in a tabular format:

Objective

Can user find salary information on payscale?

Scenario You have been told about an entry –level software

developer job in Melbourne which pays $55k to

$65k. You are thinking about applying but want to

know if the pay is appropriate for the industry.

Using www.payscale.com how would you confirm

this is industry standard?

Dependencies None

Estimated Length 2-5 minutes

Possible Solution • Arrive on the home page. Click on the following.Pay the right way->Personal-

>Career research -> Employer & Job

search.

• Change country to Australia

• Start your search – choose job from the first drop down and enter software

developer in the search box

• Refine the search by selecting the city as Melbourne and experience as Entry-level

Starting Point http://www.payscale.com

Measuring Success User finds the median pay for a developer on

payscale and determines that the average pay is

within the pay that was offered.

When you give a task to a user you only include the scenario. It would look something like this:

Task 1:

You have been told about an entry –level software developer job in Melbourne which pays $55k to $65k.

You are thinking about applying but want to know if the pay is appropriate for the industry. Using

www.payscale.com how would you confirm this is industry standard?

Part 3

Feedback time! Ask your neighbour for feedback

Further resources

• Dumas, J., Redish, J. (1999), A Practical Guide to Usability Testing, Intellect, Ltd.

• Kuniavsky, M (2012), Observing the user experience, Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco. Ch.11 p.275- 307.

• Jarrett, C., Stone, D., Woodroffe, M. (2005), User Interface Design and Evaluation, Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco. Part 4 p.419-558 and Ch.8 p.563-584.