SCOPE FOR USABILITY TESTS IN IS DEVELOPMENT

Despite being a common, established concept in wide usage, usability tests can vary greatly in goals, techniques and results. A usability test purchased and performed for a specific software product, may result in either minor user interface improvements or radical U-turns in the development. Such variation has been discussed as a problem of the scientific reliability and validity of the testing method. In practice it is more important what ‘kind of data’ one can expect of the selected method than whether it is reliably always the same data. This expectation of information content or ‘scope’ is of importance for evaluators, who select and conduct usability tests for a specific purpose. However, the scope is not explicitly stated or even discussed: Too often the premise is that, because a usability test involves users, it brings the (necessary) user-centeredness to the design i.e. takes socio-technical fundamentals as inherently given. Through a literature review of testing practices and analytical considerations, we search for the scope of a usability test, which could deliberately approach the socio-technical tradition and equally develop both the system and the user organization. A case example represents a possible realization of the extended scope of usability test

Work Informatics—Mon Amour

This article displays the professional career of the author. It is started with a chronological narrative of his academic work highlighting some crucial events in it. The main contribution of his work is a conceptual framework called ‘Work Informatics’ that regards the use of information technology as an inherent part of the work of the actual user. This framework is briefly explained. The final discussion tries to transcend the restrictions created by the unusual subjective character of this paper: what are the lessons learned and how are the two stories connected

Scope of usability tests in IS development

Despite being a common, established concept in wide usage, usability tests can vary greatly in their goals, techniques, and results. A usability test that one purchases and performs for a specific software product may result in either minor user interface improvements or radical U-turns in development. Researchers have discussed such variation as a problem that concerns testing method’s scientific reliability and validity. In practice, what “kind of data” one can expect to obtain from the selected method has more importance than whether one always obtains the same data. This expectation about information content or “scope” has importance for those who select and conduct usability tests for a specific purpose. However, researchers rarely explicitly state or even discuss scope: too often they adopt the premise that, because a usability test involves users, it brings the (necessary) user-centeredness to the design (i.e., takes socio- technical fundamentals as inherently given). We reviewed the literature on testing practices and analytical consideration and searched for the scope of a usability test that could deliberately approach the socio-technical tradition and equally develop both the system and the user organization. A case example represents a possible realization of the extended scope of usability test.</p

Animating the Ethical Demand:Exploring user dispositions in industry innovation cases through animation-based sketching

This paper addresses the challenge of attaining ethical user stances during the design process of products and services and proposes animation-based sketching as a design method, which supports elaborating and examining different ethical stances towards the user. The discussion is qualified by an empirical study of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) in a Triple Helix constellation. Using a three-week long innovation workshop, UCrAc, involving 16 Danish companies and organisations and 142 students as empirical data, we discuss how animation-based sketching can explore not yet existing user dispositions, as well as create an incentive for ethical conduct in development and innovation processes. The ethical fulcrum evolves around Løgstrup's Ethical Demand and his notion of spontaneous life manifestations. From this, three ethical stances are developed; apathy, sympathy and empathy. By exploring both apathetic and sympathetic views, the ethical reflections are more nuanced as a result of actually seeing the user experience simulated through different user dispositions. Exploring the three ethical stances by visualising real use cases with the technologies simulated as already being implemented makes the life manifestations of the users in context visible. We present and discuss how animation-based sketching can support the elaboration and examination of different ethical stances towards the user in the product and service development process. Finally we present a framework for creating narrative representations of emerging technology use cases, which invite to reflection upon the ethics of the user experience.</jats:p