Usability Engineering

Usability is the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified
goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use. It is a quality
attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use. The word "usability" also refers to
methods for improving ease-of-use during the design process.
Usability has five quality components:
 Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they
encounter the design?
 Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks?
 Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily
can they reestablish proficiency?
 Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily
can they recover from the errors?
 Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design?
Usability Engineering is a discipline that provides structured methods for achieving usability in
user interface design during product development.
Five reason why there is a need for a structured process to increase usability and why it is not
already done during the development process (e.g. by the developers themselves):
1. People believe they understand the behavior of others based on their own experience
2. This belief is only lost through prediction and measurement
3. Experience changes one’s perception of the world
4. Designers of system find it easy to use, naturally
5. Often intuitions are wrong
Enhanced reliability and efficiency of the system will have economical effects by decreasing user
support costs, and time-consuming training investments. Usability engineering will decrease
technology development time and costs: late discovery of serious flaws to a system will render
the necessary re-engineering time- and cost-intensive.
Similar to the software engineering lifecycle, the Usability Engineering Life Cycle goes hand in
hand with the software being developed and as like as there are many different software
engineering methods and process models, there are also several usability engineering life cycles.
The often have the following phases in common:
6. Requirements Analysis
o Who is the end user, who will use the product? User profiles are conceived.
o The Task analysis reveals task requirements and the current workflow as well as
specific conditions of use.
o Platform capabilities and constraints are recognized at this phase.
7. Conceptual Model Design includes reengineering the workflow and writing down the
application structure.
8. Testing and Debugging in Human Computer Interaction means designing rapid
prototypes and users test them.
9. Implementation of the "final" system, delivery and installation.
 10. Evaluation and refinement of the requirements lead to an update of the product,
repeating the usability engineering life cycle.
Observing User
- Observation is usable at all stages during product development.
Goals and questions determine the paradigms and techniques used.
Observers can be:
– Onlookers
– Participants
– Ethnographers
The degree of immersion that evaluators adopt varies across a broad outsider-insider spectrum.
Approaches to Observation
 “Quick and Dirty” observation
– It can occur anywhere, anytime
– Least formality involved
 Observation in usability testing
– Video and interaction logs capture all the user operations
– One-way mirrors or remote TV screen
– Data is used to analyze what users are doing and provide insight into users’ affective
reactions
 Observation in field studies
– The observer may be a passive observer, participant observer or an ethnographer.
– Goal is to cause as little disruption as possible.
– Passive or outside observer – An observer in a class of boys and girls whose primary job
to keep track of how much time a particular technology is used by each gender.
– Participant observer – Participates in social conventions of a group, combines
participation with maintenance of professional distance for unbiased observation.
– Ethnography – Takes weeks, months or longer. Inside information of community activity
is obtained.
Usability Analysis
- Factors that affect and crucial to usability analysis are; effectiveness, satisfaction, accuracy, and
efficiency. The process for usability evaluation is to first, identify the usage scenarios. Then
assess difficulty of use, this includes identifying system de-motivators and external de-
motivators. Then finally, make recommendations.
Specifying and Prototyping
- Prototypes provide the means for examining design problems and evaluating solutions.
Selecting the focus of a prototype is the art of identifying the most important open design
questions. Innovative prototypes generate innovative teams. The prototype plays a more
influential role in creating a team than teams do in creating prototypes. The value of prototypes
resides less in the models themselves than in the interactions they invite.