19,748 research outputs found

    From Usability Testing and Text Analysis to User Response Criticism

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    The article creates a bridge between the fields of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Digital Humanities (DH), where HCI techniques are used to evaluate tools developed in DH projects and the results of this evaluation are analysed via DH methods. Two case studies in interface and game design are presented by the application of textual analysis to user-response via three systems, for visualisation of the text as a network (Textexture), corpus analysis (TXM), and sentiment analysis (TheySay). Although further experiments and more insight into the theoretical matters are intended, we assume that this kind of analysis, beyond its usability-oriented value, may inform humanistic interface design and approaching of user models, and inspire new paths of reflection on user’s self projection in the digital space, at the intersection of digital hermeneutics, digital aesthetics, and the theory of literary response

    Current Practices for Product Usability Testing in Web and Mobile Applications

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    Software usability testing is a key methodology that ensures applications are intuitive and easy to use for the target audience. Usability testing has direct benefits for companies as usability improvements often are fundamental to the success of a product. A standard usability test study includes the following five steps: obtain suitable participants, design test scripts, conduct usability sessions, interpret test outcomes, and produce recommendations. Due to the increasing importance for more usable applications, effective techniques to develop usable products, as well as technologies to improve usability testing, have been widely utilized. However, as companies are developing more cross-platform web and mobile apps, traditional single-platform usability testing has shortcomings with respect to ensuring a uniform user experience. In this report, a new strategy is proposed to promote a consistent user experience across all application versions and platforms. This method integrates the testing of different application versions, e.g., the website, mobile app, mobile website. Participants are recruited with a better-defined criterion according to their preferred devices. The usability session is conducted iteratively on several different devices, and the test results of individual application versions are compared on a per-device basis to improve the test outcomes. This strategy is expected to extend on current practices for usability testing by incorporating cross-platform consistency of software versions on most devices

    Systematic evaluation of design choices for software development tools

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    [Abstract]: Most design and evaluation of software tools is based on the intuition and experience of the designers. Software tool designers consider themselves typical users of the tools that they build and tend to subjectively evaluate their products rather than objectively evaluate them using established usability methods. This subjective approach is inadequate if the quality of software tools is to improve and the use of more systematic methods is advocated. This paper summarises a sequence of studies that show how user interface design choices for software development tools can be evaluated using established usability engineering techniques. The techniques used included guideline review, predictive modelling and experimental studies with users

    Investigating heuristic evaluation as a methodology for evaluating pedagogical software: An analysis employing three case studies

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    This paper looks specifically at how to develop light weight methods of evaluating pedagogically motivated software. Whilst we value traditional usability testing methods this paper will look at how Heuristic Evaluation can be used as both a driving force of Software Engineering Iterative Refinement and end of project Evaluation. We present three case studies in the area of Pedagogical Software and show how we have used this technique in a variety of ways. The paper presents results and reflections on what we have learned. We conclude with a discussion on how this technique might inform on the latest developments on delivery of distance learning. © 2014 Springer International Publishing
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