Unit 4 – Evaluation

Techniques
 Evaluation
 tests usability and functionality of system.
 To test our system to ensure that they actually behave as we
expect.
 occurs in laboratory, field and/or in collaboration with users
 evaluates both design and implementation
 should be considered at all stages in the design life cycle

Two Evaluation Techniques

 Evaluation through expert Analysis
 Evaluation through user participation.
Three main Goals of Evaluation
Assess extent of system functionality
 Should enable users to perform their tasks more easily.
 Includes measuring the users performance with the system.
Assess effect of interface on user
 Important to access users experience of the interaction and its impact
 Aspects include how easy the system to learn, its usability, user’s
statisfaction
Identify specific problems
 Identify trouble-spots and rectified
 Related to both functionality and usability of design
Evaluation through Expert Analysis

Cognitive Walkthrough
Heuristic Evaluation
Review-based evaluation
Cognitive Walkthrough
Proposed by Polson et al.
 evaluates design on how well it supports user in learning task
 usually performed by expert in cognitive psychology
 expert ‘walks though’ design to identify potential problems using psychological
principles
 forms used to guide analysis
 For each task walkthrough considers
 what impact will interaction have on user?
 what cognitive processes are required?
 what learning problems may occur?
 Analysis focuses on goals and knowledge: does the design lead the user to
generate the correct goals?
Heuristic Evaluation
 Proposed by Nielsen and Molich.
 usability criteria (heuristics) are identified
 design examined by experts to see if these are violated
 Example heuristics
 system behaviour is predictable
 system behaviour is consistent
 feedback is provided

 Heuristic evaluation `debugs' design.

Review-based evaluation
 Results from the literature used to support or refute parts
of design.
 Care needed to ensure results are transferable to new
design.
 Model-based evaluation
 Cognitive models used to filter design options
e.g. GOMS prediction of user performance
 Design rationale can also provide useful evaluation
information
Evaluating through user Participation
Styles of evaluation
Empirical methods: experimental evaluation
Observational techniques
Query techniques
Evaluation through monitoring physiological responses
Styles of Evaluation
Laboratory studies
 Advantages:
 specialist equipment available
 uninterrupted environment
 Disadvantages:
 lack of context
 difficult to observe several users cooperating
 Appropriate
 if system location is dangerous or impractical for constrained
single user systems to allow controlled manipulation of use
Field Studies
 Advantages:
 natural environment
 context retained (though observation may alter it)
 longitudinal studies possible
 Disadvantages:
 distractions
 noise
 Appropriate
 where context is crucial for longitudinal studies
Experimental evaluation
 controlled evaluation of specific aspects of interactive behaviour

 evaluator chooses hypothesis to be tested

 a number of experimental conditions are considered which differ only in the

value of some controlled variable.

 changes in behavioural measure are attributed to different conditions

Experimental factors
 Subjects - who – representative, sufficient sample
 Variables - things to modify and measure
 Hypothesis - what you’d like to show
 Experimental design - how you are going to do it
Variables
 independent variable (IV)
 characteristic changed to produce different conditions
 e.g. interface style, number of menu items
 dependent variable (DV)
 characteristics measured in the experiment
 e.g. time taken, number of errors.

Hypothesis
 prediction of outcome
 framed in terms of IV and DV
 e.g. “error rate will increase as font size decreases”
 null hypothesis:
 states no difference between conditions
 aim is to disprove this
 e.g. null hyp. = “no change with font size”
Experimental design
 within groups design
 each subject performs experiment under each condition.
 transfer of learning possible
 less costly and less likely to suffer from user variation.
 between groups design
 each subject performs under only one condition
 no transfer of learning
 more users required
 variation can bias results.
Observational Methods

Think Aloud
Cooperative evaluation
Protocol analysis
Automated analysis
Post-task walkthroughs
Think Aloud
 user observed performing task
 user asked to describe what he is doing and why, what he thinks is
happening etc.
 Advantages
 simplicity - requires little expertise
 can provide useful insight
 can show how system is actually use
 Disadvantages
 subjective
 selective
 act of describing may alter task performance
Cooperative evaluation
 variation on think aloud
 user collaborates in evaluation
 both user and evaluator can ask each other questions throughout
 Additional advantages
 less constrained and easier to use
 user is encouraged to criticize system
 clarification possible
Protocol analysis
 paper and pencil – cheap, limited to writing speed
 audio – good for think aloud, difficult to match with other protocols
 video – accurate and realistic, needs special equipment, obtrusive
 computer logging – automatic and unobtrusive, large amounts of data
difficult to analyze
 user notebooks – coarse and subjective, useful insights, good for
longitudinal studies
 Mixed use in practice.
 audio/video transcription difficult and requires skill.
 Some automatic support tools available
Automated analysis
 Workplace project
 Post task walkthrough
 user reacts on action after the event
 used to fill in intention
 Advantages
 analyst has time to focus on relevant incidents
 avoid excessive interruption of task
 Disadvantages
 lack of freshness
 may be post-hoc interpretation of events
post-task walkthroughs
 transcript played back to participant for comment
 immediately  fresh in mind
 delayed  evaluator has time to identify questions
 useful to identify reasons for actions and alternatives considered
 necessary in cases where think aloud is not possible
Query Techniques
Interviews
Questionnaires
Interviews
 analyst questions user on one-to -one basis
usually based on prepared questions
 informal, subjective and relatively cheap

 Advantages
 can be varied to suit context
 issues can be explored more fully
 can elicit user views and identify unanticipated problems
 Disadvantages
 very subjective
 time consuming
Questionnaires
 Set of fixed questions given to users
 Advantages
 quick and reaches large user group
 can be analyzed more rigorously
 Disadvantages
 less flexible
 less probing
 Need careful design
 what information is required?
 how are answers to be analyzed?
 Styles of question
 general

 open-ended
 scalar
 multi-choice

 ranked
Physiological methods
Eye tracking
Physiological measurement
eye tracking
 head or desk mounted equipment tracks the position of the eye
 eye movement reflects the amount of cognitive processing a display
requires
 measurements include
 fixations: eye maintains stable position. Number and duration
indicate level of difficulty with display
 saccades: rapid eye movement from one point of interest to
another
 scan paths: moving straight to a target with a short fixation at the
target is optimal
physiological measurements
 emotional response linked to physical changes
 these may help determine a user’s reaction to an interface
 measurements include:
 heart activity, including blood pressure, volume and pulse.
 activity of sweat glands: Galvanic Skin Response (GSR)
 electrical activity in muscle: electromyogram (EMG)
 electrical activity in brain: electroencephalogram (EEG)
 some difficulty in interpreting these physiological responses - more
research needed
 Cognitive models
 They model aspects of user:
 understanding
 knowledge
 intentions
 Processing
 The formalisms have largely been developed by psychologists, or computer scientists, whose interest is in understanding user
behavior.
 Common categorisation:
 Competence vs. Performance
 Computational flavour
 No clear divide
 Competence models, therefore, represent the kinds of behavior expected of a user, but they provide little help in analyzing
that behavior to determine its demands on the user.
 Performance models provide analytical power mainly by focusing on routine behavior in very limited applications.
Goal and task hierarchies
 Mental processing as divide-and-conquer(subgoals concept)
 Example: sales report for book
produce report
gather data
. find book names
. . do keywords search of names database
. . . … further sub-goals
. . shift through names and abstracts by hand
. . . … further sub-goals
. search sales database - further sub-goals
layout tables and histograms - further sub-goals
write description - further sub-goals
 goals vs. tasks
goals – intentions
what you would like to be true
tasks – actions
how to achieve it Techniques
 GOMS – goals are internal • Goals, Operators, Methods and
 HTA – actions external
– tasks are abstractions Selection (GOMS)
Issues for goal hierarchies
• Cognitive Complexity Theory
 Granularity
 Where do we start?
(CCT)
 Where do we stop?
 Routine learned behaviour, not problem solving • Hierarchical Task Analysis (HTA)
 The unit task
 Conflict
 More than one way to achieve a goal
 Error
 GOMS
Goals
 what the user wants to achieve

Operators
 basic actions user performs

Methods
 decomposition of a goal into subgoals/operators

Selection
 means of choosing between competing methods
 GOMS example
 GOAL: CLOSE-WINDOW
 . [select GOAL: USE-MENU-METHOD
 . MOVE-MOUSE-TO-FILE-MENU
 . PULL-DOWN-FILE-MENU
 . CLICK-OVER-CLOSE-OPTION
 GOAL: USE-CTRL-W-METHOD
 . PRESS-CONTROL-W-KEYS]

 For a particular user:

 Rule 1: Select USE-MENU-METHOD unless another

 rule applies
 Rule 2: If the application is GAME,
 select CTRL-W-METHOD
 The dots are used to indicate the hierarchical level of goals.
 Selection : From the above snippet we see the use of the word “select” where the choice of
methods arises.
 The original GOMS model has served as the basis for much of the cognitive modeling
research in HCI.
Cognitive Complexity Theory
 Cognitive complexity theory, introduced by Kieras and Polson.
 Begins with the basic premises of goal decomposition from GOMS and enriches the
model to provide more predictive power
 Two parallel descriptions:
 User production rules
 Device generalised transition networks
 Production rules are of the form:
 if condition then action
 An action may consist of one or more elementary actions, which may be either changes
to the working memory, or external actions such as keystrokes.
 Transition networks covered under dialogue models
Example: editing TASK using UNIX vi editor
 Production rules are in long-term memory
 Model working memory as attribute-value mapping:
(GOAL perform unit task) Advantages:
• Parallel model
(TEXT task is insert space) • Proceduralization of actions
(TEXT task is at 5 23) • Novice versus expert style rules
• Error behaviour can be
(CURSOR 8 7) represented
• Measures
 Rules are pattern-matched to working memory, • depth of goal structure
• number of rules
 e.g., LOOK-TEXT task is at %LINE %COLUMN • comparison with device
is true, with LINE = 5 COLUMN = 23. description
Linguistic notations
 Understanding the user's behaviour and cognitive difficulty based on analysis of language between user and system.
 Similar in emphasis to dialogue models.
 Backus–Naur Form (BNF)
 Task–Action Grammar (TAG)

Backus-Naur Form (BNF)

 Representative of the linguistic approach is Reisner’s use of Backus–Naur Form (BNF) rules to describe
the dialog grammar.
 This views the dialog at a purely syntactic level, ignoring the semantics of the language.
 BNF has been used widely to specify the syntax of computer programming languages, and many system
dialogs can be described easily using BNF rules.
 For example, imagine a graphics system that has a line-drawing function.
 To select the function the user must select the ‘line’ menu option. The line-drawing function allows the
user to draw a polyline, that is a sequence of line arcs between points. The user selects the points by
clicking the mouse button in the drawing area. The user double clicks to indicate the last point of the
polyline.
Example of BNF
 Basic syntax:
 nonterminal ::= expression
 An expression
 contains terminals and nonterminals
 combined in sequence (+) or as alternatives (|)

 draw line ::= select line + choose points + last point

 select line ::= pos mouse + CLICK MOUSE
 choose points ::= choose one | choose one + choose points
 choose one ::= pos mouse + CLICK MOUSE
 last point ::= pos mouse + DBL CLICK MOUSE
 pos mouse ::= NULL | MOVE MOUSE+ pos mouse
Task Action Grammar (TAG)
 Making consistency more explicit
 Encoding user's world knowledge
 Parameterised grammar rules
 Non terminals are modified to include additional semantic features

Consistency in TAG
 In BNF, three UNIX commands would be described as:

copy ::= cp + filename + filename | cp + filenames + directory

move ::= mv + filename + filename | mv + filenames + directory
link ::= ln + filename + filename | ln + filenames + directory

 No BNF measure could distinguish between this and a less consistent grammar
in which

 link ::= ln + filename + filename | ln + directory + filenames

Other uses of TAG
 User’s existing knowledge
 Congruence between features and commands
 These are modelled as derived rules
Physical and device models
2 models:
 The Keystroke Level Model (KLM)
 Buxton's 3-state model
The task is split into two phases:
acquisition of the task, when the user builds a mental
representation of the task;
execution of the task using the system’s facilities.
 Based on empirical knowledge of human motor system
 User's task: acquisition then execution.
 these only address execution
 Complementary with goal hierarchies
Keystroke Level Model (KLM)
 lowest level of (original) GOMS
 six execution phase operators
 Physical motor: K - keystroking
P - pointing
H - homing
D - drawing

 Mental M - mental preparation

 System R - response

 times are empirically determined.

 Time Execute = TK + TP + TH + TD + TM + TR
Three-state model
 We have that a range of pointing s exists in addition to the mouse.
 Often these devices are considered logically equivalent, if the same inputs are available to the
application.
 However, these different devices – mouse, trackball, light pen – feel very different.
 Buxton has developed a simple model of input devices ,the three-state model,
 Which captures some of these crucial distinctions.
 He begins by looking at a mouse.
 If you move it with no buttons pushed, it normally moves the mouse cursor about. This tracking
behavior is termed state 1. Depressing a button over an icon and then moving the mouse will
often result in an object being dragged about. This he calls state 2.
COGNITIVE ARCHITECTURES
 All of these cognitive models make assumptions about the architecture of
the human mind.
 Long-term/Short-term memory
 Problem spaces
 Interacting Cognitive Subsystems

Display-based interaction
 Most cognitive models do not deal with user observation and perception
 Some techniques have been extended to handle system output
(e.g., BNF with sensing terminals, Display-TAG) but problems persist

 Exploratory interaction versus planning