Measuring usability for application software using the quality in use integration measurement model

User interfaces of application software are designed to make user interaction as efficient and as simple as possible. Market accessibility of any application software is determined by the usability of its user interfaces. A poorly designed user interface will have little value no matter how powerful the program is. Thus, it is significantly important to measure usability during the system development lifecycle in order to avoid user disappointment. Various methods and standards that help measure usability have been developed. However, these methods define usability inconsistently, which makes software engineers hesitant in implementing these methods or standards. The Quality in Use Integrated Measurement (QUIM) model is a consolidated approach for measuring usability through 10 factors, 26 criteria, and 127 metrics. It decomposes usability into factors, criteria, and metrics, and it is a hierarchical model that helps developers with no or little background of usability metrics. Among 127 metrics of QUIM, essential efficiency (EE) is the most specific metric used to measure the usability of user interfaces through an equation. This study involves a comparative analysis between three case studies that use the QUIM model to measure usability in terms of EE for three case studies: (1) Public University Registration System, (2) Restaurant Menu Ordering System, and (3) ATM system. A comparison is made based on the percentage of EE for each element of the use cases in each use case diagram. The results obtained revealed that the user interface design for Restaurant Menu Ordering System scored the highest percentage of EE, thus proving to be the most user-friendly application software among its counterparts

Usability Patterns for Geoportals

Ponencias, comunicaciones y pósters presentados en el 17th AGILE Conference on Geographic Information Science "Connecting a Digital Europe through Location and Place", celebrado en la Universitat Jaume I del 3 al 6 de junio de 2014.Current geoportals and metadata catalogues, as user interfaces for discovery and exploration for geodata do still suffer from lacking usability, regardless whether experts or non-expert users are considered. Design patterns are well established in software development to tackle frequently occurring problems. Usability patterns are a specialization of such design patterns to specifically address user interface issues and related software solutions. However, existing usability patterns are not sufficient to cope with GI-usability issues as for instance related to discovery of geodata. This poster submission introduces an adapted GI-usability pattern concept

A New View at Usability Test Methods of Interfaces for Human Computer Interaction

As a basic and important term in the interaction design usability is an overall rating of the degree of use in the human computer interaction which guarantees the realization of interaction Usability test is a necessary process in the human computer interface design It is a process of through systematically collecting the usability data of interface and assessing and improving the data Designers can enhance the usability through testing and improving the present interface designers can also evaluate the usability of the present interface borrowing its strongpoint improving its shortcomings and applying in the new design Conducting sufficient usability test requires planning and attention to the evaluation details In common usability test methods for software take into considerations planning usability questions selecting a representative sample and recruiting participant s and preparing the test materials and actualtest environment In order to make a way to select an appropriate method to perform a usability test this paper has introduced the usability test methods in the human computer interface design then analyzed and summarized the methods and finally state of the art taxonomy is presente

Modeling the human centered design adoption through HCI capability / Rogayah Abdul Majid

The Human Centered Design (HCD) approach rooted in the semi-scientific field of ergonomics was introduced into the software development process to increase the software usability and quality by focusing on the software use and applying human factors/ergonomics and usability knowledge and techniques. In the progress the Human Centered Software Engineering (HCSE) was developed more than a decade ago. HCSE is the framework for integrating the human centered design philosophy and usability engineering into traditional systems development method. Despite its importance, HCD adoption among software practitioners remains low, as reflected in the result of the preliminary study conducted among the Malaysian software development organizations. This research argues that to encourage the HCD adoption among software practitioners a path for HCD adoption needs to be prescribed. This research also argues that an organizational approach and not individual advocates of human-centered design must be used to facilitate the adoption of HCD in systems development. Following this argument of this research embarks on the strategizing of HCD adoption through the development of an adoption model that can inform the readiness of adopting HCD based on technological and organizational capability. The research was carried out in three phases

УПРАВЛІННЯ ЗРУЧНІСТЮ ВИКОРИСТАННЯ В КОНТЕКСТІ АРХІТЕКТУРИ ПРОГРАМНОГО ЗАБЕЗПЕЧЕННЯ

The article is devoted to the issue of relationship between usability and software architecture. Architectural solutions that have influence on overall software usability through concrete properties and attributesare analyzed using the concept of usability patterns. The last one is applied to the earlier developed author’s usability management method considering the usability model based on the latest standards. Conclusion is made that usability improvement in the context of the method of software usability management should be started from the design stage of the software lifecycle. Design solutions which have positive effect on  particular usability property are defined.Статья посвящена вопросу связиудобства использования программного обеспечения и его архитектуры. Архитектурные решения, имеющие влияние на общее удобство использования программного обеспечения через конкретные характеристики исвойства, проанализированына основе концепции шаблонов удобства использования. Концепция применена к ранее разработанному автором методу управления удобством использования программного обеспечения, учитывая модель, основанную на последних стандартах в данной области. Сделан вывод, что улучшение удобства использования в контексте упомянутого метода следует начинать с этапа проектирования программного обеспечения. Определены архитектурные решения, позитивно влияющиенаконкретные свойстваудобства использования программного обеспечения.Стаття присвячена питанню зв'язку зручності використання програмного забезпечення та його архітектури. Архітектурні рішення, що мають вплив на загальну зручність використання програмного забезпечення через конкретні характеристики та властивості, проаналізовані на основі концепції шаблонів зручності використання. Концепція застосована до раніше розробленого автором методу управління зручністю використання програмного забезпечення, враховуючи модель, засновану на останніх стандартах в даній області. Зроблено висновок, що поліпшення зручності використання в контексті згаданого методу слід починати з етапу проектування програмного забезпечення. Визначено архітектурні рішення, які позитивно впливають на конкретні властивості зручності використання програмного забезпечення

Towards Interactive Systems Usability Improvement through Simulation Modeling

Nowadays, usability has become an essential contribution to the success of interactive systems and is recognized as a quality attribute for software products. This paper proposes the use of dynamic simulation models for the improvement of interactive systems usability through the application of a User Centered Design (UCD) process and its integration into the software development process. The simulation model developed is used to experiment on the effect that different levels of usability have over the behavior of the UCD process in a specific kind of interactive systems such as web site application development.Comisión Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnología (CICYT) TIC 2003-369Comisión Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnología (CICYT) TIC-2001-1143-C03-0

Usability evaluation of a prototype design tool for uncertainty propagation and sensitivity analysis

Software developments in the domain of building performance simulation (BPS) targeting the early design stages of a building need to address two points successfully to be adopted in design practice: (1) facilitating communication between multiple engineering disciplines and (2) the limited amount of design information. The authors consider the limited amount of design information available not as a limit but as a design uncertainty. To focus the designer’s attention the approach chosen here is to extend the capabilities of existing simulation tools with uncertainty and sensitivity analysis. The development of software goes as any product development through stages as design, synthesis and analysis and involves numerous design iterations. The analysis of the prototypical tool extension includes verification und usability evaluation. Whilst the verification of prototypical design tools is necessary to ensure the added analysis functionality is implemented correctly the usability evaluation is to ensure the proposed feature meets the demand of the potential user group. A heuristic usability evaluation was conducted with six expert practitioners using a paper prototype. The quantitative feedback to heuristics as design guidance, process integration, and application confirmed the potential of the tool extension to support design practice. The usability evaluation indicated that expert practitioners would encourage the use of uncertainty propagation and sensitivity analysis if tool extensions to BPS-tools were available. The experts assess uncertainty propagation and sensitivity analysis to add value by reducing the risk of technical design decisions and limiting the extent of design iterations

Towards a catalog of usability smells

This paper presents a catalog of smells in the context of interactive applications. These so-called usability smells are indicators of poor design on an application's user interface, with the potential to hinder not only its usability but also its maintenance and evolution. To eliminate such usability smells we discuss a set of program/usability refactorings. In order to validate the presented usability smells catalog, and the associated refactorings, we present a preliminary empirical study with software developers in the context of a real open source hospital management application. Moreover, a tool that computes graphical user interface behavior models, giving the applications' source code, is used to automatically detect usability smells at the model level.This work was partially funded by the ERDF - European Regional Development Fund through the COMPETE Programme (operational programme for competitiveness) and by National Funds through the FCT (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology), within projects reference FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-020484 (J. Saraiva) and FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-020554 (J. C. Campos)

The IBdata Web System for Biological Collections: Design Focused on Usability

The software design process must put users at the core of the process to enable them to meet their specific objectives effectively, efficiently, and successfully. Thus, a software design for a computing system to consult biological collections guided by the concept of usability will result in an effective and efficient biodiversity informatics tool. Here, we introduce IBdata, a web system to consult biological collections, developed using a design approach based on the architecture of three layers: database, business rules, and user interface. The user interface design was guided by the concept of usability focused on four core concepts: simplicity, adaptability, guide the user through the journey, and feedback. The IBdata web system that we developed is composed of three modules (query, capture and editing, and administration), permitting it to query a database with about 1.7 million specimen records. Biodiversity data query systems must be effective and efficient and should meet the user’s expectations. Software design methodologies play a central role in achieving these goals, and, in this context, interface design techniques that put the user at the core of development are valuable, as in the development of the IBdata web system