Defining usability heuristics for adoption and efficiency of an electronic workflow document management system

Usability heuristics have been established for different uses and applications as general guidelines for user interfaces. These can affect the implementation of industry solutions and play a significant role regarding cost reduction and process efficiency. The area of electronic workflow document management (EWDM) solutions, also known as workflow, lacks a formal definition of usability heuristics. With the advent of new technologies such as mobile devices, defining a set of usability heuristics contributes to the adoption and efficiency of an EWDM system. Workflow usability has been evaluated for various industries. Most significantly research has been done for electronic healthcare records (EHR). In other areas such as the financial sector and educational institutions there is also some literature available but not as abundant as for EHR. This was identified as a possible research limitation. The general purpose of this research was to establish and validate an overarching set of usability heuristics for EWDM in general. This was approached by conducting a literature review and a survey on 32 workflow consultants from Hyland Software, Inc. Quantitative and qualitative data was collected focusing on the study’s main research question: “what usability heuristics should be defined to ensure the adoption and efficiency of a workflow implementation? Findings based on regression testing and expert opinions have suggested a proposed set of usability heuristics. The final list consists of: adaptability to diverse platforms, user control, system feedback, intuitive interfaces, visibility on mobile devices, error management, help, and documentation

Facilitating heuristic evaluation for novice evaluators

Heuristic evaluation (HE) is one of the most widely used usability evaluation methods. The reason for its popularity is that it is a discount method, meaning that it does not require substantial time or resources, and it is simple, as evaluators can evaluate a system guided by a set of usability heuristics. Despite its simplicity, a major problem with HE is that there is a significant gap in the quality of results produced by expert and novice evaluators. This gap has made some scholars question the usefulness of the method as they claim that the evaluation results are a product of the evaluator’s experience rather than the method itself. In response, the goal of this thesis is to bridge the gap between expert and novice evaluators. Based on interviews with 15 usability experts, which focused on their experience with the method, the difficulties they faced when they were novices, and how they overcame such difficulties, it presents a comprehensive protocol called Coherent Heuristic Evaluation (CoHE). This step-by-step protocol guides novice evaluators from the moment they decide to conduct an evaluation until the submission of their evaluation report. This protocol was verified by conducting an experiment to observe the difference between novices using the CoHE protocol and novices using Nielsen’s 10 usability heuristics without the guidance. The experiment involved 20 novices performing two sessions; the first was an understanding session where the novices read and understood the heuristics and the second was an inspecting session where they inspected a system. The findings show that, while evaluators take more time to read and evaluate a system using CoHE, they tend to identify more problems. The experiment also demonstrated that CoHE can improve the thoroughness, effectiveness, and f-measure of evaluation. However, the validity of CoHE was comparable to that of HE