Joseph S. Dumas
Oracle Corporation
Introduction
User-Administered Questionnaires
Off-the-Shelf Questionnaires
Observing Users
Empirical Usability Testing
The Focus Is on Usability
The Participants Are End Users or Potential End Users
There Is a Product or System to Evaluate
The Participants Think Aloud As They Perform Tasks
The Participants Are Observed, and Data Are Recorded and Analyzed
Measures and Data Analysis
Communicating Test Results
Variations on the Essentials
Measuring and Comparing Usability
Comparing the Usability of Products
Baseline Usability Tests
Allowing Free Exploration
Challenges to the Validity of Usability Testing
How Do We Evaluate Usability Testing?
Why Can’t We Map Usability Measures to User Interface Components?
Are We Ignoring the Operational Environment?
Why Don ’t Usability Specialists See the Same Usability Problems?
Additional Issues
How Do We Evaluate Ease of Use?
How Does Usability Testing Compare With Other Evaluation Methods?
Is It Time to Standardize Methods?
Are There Ethical Issues in User Testing?
Is Testing Web-Based Products Different?
The Future of Usability Testing
Which User-Based Method to Use?
References
Figure 56.1: An idealized curve showing the number of participants needed to find various proportions of usability problems.
Figure 56.2: Sample data collection form.
Figure 56.3: The scope of human factors. From “Usability testing methods: When does a usability test become a research experiment? ”by J.Dumas, 2000, Common Ground,10. Reprinted with permission.