TOPIC AND STRUCTURE OF

THE LESSON
1. Usability engineering lifecycle model
2. Stakeholder analysis
3. User profiling
4. Data gathering activities

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LEARNING OUTCOME
At the end of this tutorial, you should be able to:
1. Describe the usability Engineering Lifecyle used in the UI development.
2. Identify the stakeholder of the system design to guide the user requirement and
evaluation
3. Explain the purpose of user profiling
4. Describe the various data gathering techniques

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 USABILITY ENGINEERING

The term usability engineering describes a process of user interface development,

sometimes referred to as user centered design.
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 USABILITY ENGINEERING
CONT..
User centered design means – it is a lifecycle process that puts an early emphasis on
user and task analysis and actual user involvement in the design and testing of a
product.
A product developed with such a user centered process is likely to be more usable
product than one that is developed independent of user considerations and
involvement.
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 USABILITY ENGINEERING
LIFECYCLE MODEL
Activities Involved:
• Identify stakeholder – primary user, Users, Task & Environment Analysis Activities involved:
secondary user, tertiary user & facilitating • Choose suitable usability goals to be
user assign to the UI
• Execute data gathering activities & analyse • Choose suitable guidelines to match
data retrieve with the usability goals identified
• Outcome of the activities
• User requirement list
Usability Goals & Competitive Analysis • Conduct competitive analysis
• User profiling table Low Fidelity Prototyping
• Execute task analysis
Activities involved:
Parallel Design Sketches • Create sketches of the proposed UI individually
with all the development team, no user involved
in this stage.
Activities involved: • Evaluate the sketches done thru peer- to – peer
• Get the user involved back in the development activities by evaluation
conducting the participatory design by using suitable
techniques such as card sorting, user interface
Participatory Design
documentation for gathering user feedback High Fidelity Prototyping
Activities involved:
Iterative Design
First Prototype • Developed high fidelity prototyping

Activities involved:
•
•
DECIDE Framework
Usability testing Formative Evaluation
• Heuristic evaluation

Final Release UI concept

Start Programming
 USABILITY ENGINEERING –
USER, TASK AND
ENVIRONMENT ANALYSIS
Defining Stakeholder (User)
STAGE
Stakeholder are defined as anyone who is affected by the success and the failure of the
system

Type of Stakeholder Description

Primary user Those who use the system

Secondary user Those who don’t directly use the system but receive the output
from it. For an example someone who receive reports from the
system.
Tertiary user Those who do not fall into 1 and 2 but who are affected by the
success or failure of the system. For an example, a director
whose profits increase or decrease depending on the success of
the system.
Facilitating user Those who are involved in designing and maintaining the
system
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USABILITY ENGINEERING –
USER, TASK AND
ENVIRONMENT ANALYSIS
STAGE CONT..
User Profiling
“One most unfortunate product is the type of engineer who does not realize that in order
to apply the fruit of science for the benefit of mankind, he must not only grasp the
principles of science, but must also know the needs and aspirations, the possibilities and
the frailties, of those whom he would serve.” Vannevar Bush
What is user profiling?
 Process of establishing knowledge about the user by
 Finding out who are the user?
 Children, elderly , professional, male, female and others
 Finding out what is their goals in using the product?
 Withdraw money, research, cook, pay bills and others
 Finding out what are the tasks involve to achieve their goals ?
 To apply for leave: check schedule  get leave application form fill the form  get supervisor approval  get manager
approval  inform teams go on leave.
USABILITY ENGINEERING – USER,
TASK AND ENVIRONMENT ANALYSIS
STAGE CONT..
Reason of why do user profiling rather than define what is good for them:
 Infinite variety of tasks and users
 Guidelines can be too vague to be generative such as “give adequate feedback”, make the system
enjoyable”. How do you define the above guidelines and relate to users?

User profiling
 Captures the characteristic of the intended user group such as able to form an information about the
user skills and competence and then categorize them for the next process.
 Novice, intermediate/casual, expert
USABILITY ENGINEERING – USER,
TASK AND ENVIRONMENT ANALYSIS
STAGE CONT..
1. Who are the users? 2. Where is the task performed?
Identify user attributes such as :
• Office, laboratory, POS? , crowded places and etc.
• Surrounding noise
• Physical characteristic (physical abilities/ disabilities)
• Background (education, culture)
• Skill (task experience)
• Preferences

What do we want to know?

3. Relationship between users & data 4.How often are tasks performed?

• Personal data (always accessed at same machine? Or does the user move between • Frequent user remember more details
machine?) • Infrequent user may need more help even for simple operation
• Common data ( how frequently use it? How does it being passed between users?) • Which function is performed frequently ? By which users? And others.
• Access to data restricted?
 USABILITY ENGINEERING – USER,
TASK AND ENVIRONMENT ANALYSIS
STAGE
Once CONT..
have determine the range responses for each of the characteristics and the percentage
of users along that range , you will want to categorize in into group based on their
similarities, such as:

Demographics characteristics: Age, gender, Tasks: primary tasks, secondary tasks

location, socio economic status
Occupation experience: current job title, years at the Domain knowledge: the user understanding of the
company, years of experience at that position, product area
responsibilities and etc.
Company information: company size, industry Technology available: computer hardware, software
and other tools typically used.
Education : degree? Major? Courses taken Attitudes and values: product preference, fear of
technology, etc.
Computer experience: computer skills, years of Learning style: visual learner, audio learner, etc.
experience
Specific product experience: experience with
competitor products, usage trends
USABILITY ENGINEERING –
USER, TASK AND
ENVIRONMENT ANALYSIS
STAGE User
CONT..
Profile Table
USABILITY ENGINEERING –
USER, TASK AND
ENVIRONMENT ANALYSIS
STAGE CONT..
Data Gathering (User requirement)

An important part of the requirement activity and evaluation activity

Purpose: to collect sufficient , relevant and appropriate data to produce set of reliable
requirement/ conclusions
 USABILITY ENGINEERING –
USER, TASK AND
ENVIRONMENT
Data gathering techniques
ANALYSIS
STAGE CONT..
Technique
Questionnaire
Good For
Answering specific
Kind Of Data
Quantitative and
Advantages
Can reach many people
Disadvantage
The design is crucial.
question qualitative data with low resources Response rate may be
low. Responses may
not be what you want.

Interviews Exploring issues Some quantitative but Interviewer can guide Time consuming.
mostly qualitative data interviewee if Artificial environment
necessary. Encourages may intimidate
contact between interviewee.
developers and user

Focus group and Collecting multiple Some quantitative but Highlight areas of Possibility of dominant
workshops viewpoints mostly qualitative data consensus and conflict. character
Encourages contact
between developers
and users

Naturalistic observation Understanding context Qualitative Observing actual work Very time consuming.
of user activity gives insights that other Huge amount of data
techniques can’t give

Studying documentation Learning about Quantitative No time commitment Day to day working will
procedures, regulations from user required differ from documented
and standards procedures.
USABILITY ENGINEERING –
USER, TASK AND
ENVIRONMENT ANALYSIS
STAGE CONT..
Choosing the techniques ca be investigate this 2 issues:
The amount of time they take, and the level of detail and risk associated with the
finding. Example, it is claim that a naturalistic observation will take two days effort
and three month of training while interviews take one day effort and one month of
training.
The knowledge the analyst must have about the process
 USABILITY ENGINEERING –
USER, TASK AND
ENVIRONMENT
Questionnaire Sample
ANALYSIS
STAGE CONT..

Question : What is your age ?

Justification : Finding the age range of the targeted
audience.
Analysis : 20 – 30 yrs - 20%
30 – 50 yrs – 80%
Impact : Due to the analysis result above, the data is
to help in creating the user profile for the
proposed system in understanding about the
user.
USABILITY ENGINEERING – USER, TASK AND
ENVIRONMENT ANALYSIS STAGE CONT..
• Interviewee’s name: Mr Smith James
• Age: 28
• Date: 1/October/2010
• Venue: APIIT’s Library syndicate room
Interview
Sample Question: What is the biggest drawback to the current library system?

Analysis
Response: Inability to search the bookshelf by Title, Author or ISBN.
Impact on the design: Include in the modified design the ability to
search by Title, Author and ISBN.
 USABILITY ENGINEERING –
USER, TASK AND
ENVIRONMENT ANALYSIS
STAGE CONT..
Actions/ Observations
Simple Observation Sample

Discussion Impact
Event
Making a bill After logging in the user checks the menus to identify if he was From the observations it was found that the The redesigned process will
payment to Astro able to view any menu regarding the task that he was assigned. users became frustrated with the number of reduce the number of steps
After spending around 30 seconds reading the main menu titles steps which were involved in completing the needed to complete the
and details he pressed the Accountings & banking menu. Here the processes. In addition to that the users also process
balance was visible. So the user went back again and read the text found it frustrating that they were unable to
identify the submenus within the main menus.
explaining the Accountings & Banking option and again clicked it.
.
After looking around the page for a few seconds he selected the
Bill Payment option which was available on the left side of the
screen. The choice to make a one-off payment was available to
him when the page loaded so he selected in at once.
After selecting the one-off payment option the user selected Astro
from a list of top 9 payees that were listed on the screen. In the
next page the user entered the amount, selected and entered the bill
account number and clicked continue. Then the user had to enter a
TAC number there was the option for a TAC request so the user
selected the option and another screen opened. From here the user
requested the TAC number and the screen is closed then the user
press the confirm button to finish the task.
QUESTION AND ANSWER
SESSION

Q&A
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NEXT SESSION
Topic and structure of next session:

Usability Engineering – User , Task and Environment Analysis Stage (TASK

ANALYSIS)

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USABILITY ENGINEERING – USER,
TASK AND ENVIRONMENT ANALYSIS
STAGE – TASK ANALYSIS
1. Topic & Structure of the lesson
 Task analysis
 Hierarchical task analysis

2. Learning outcomes
 At the end of this lecture, you should be able to:
 Draft the Hierarchical Task Analysis ( textual or graphical based) and analyze it.

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USABILITY ENGINEERING – USER,
TASK AND ENVIRONMENT ANALYSIS
STAGE – TASK ANALYSIS CONT..
Task Analysis
A method/set of methods for understanding the tasks users carry out with a products
/ system
Tasks analysis techniques support user-centered design.
It inform us (in detail) as to:
 verifies that the set of actions employed by the user do to accomplish the task.
 Task analysis explicitly describes the procedure that the user employs since this may be different from the
expected series of actions.
 To improve the delivery of information to the user.
 This involves identifying any problems with the delivery of information to the user and the consideration of
possible solutions.

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USABILITY ENGINEERING – USER,
TASK AND ENVIRONMENT ANALYSIS
STAGE – TASK ANALYSIS CONT..
Task analysis can be used to:
 improve current design
 identify potential problems with new design
 identify requirements for new design
 design training materials and manuals
 develop evaluation plans
 conduct basic usability evaluations

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USABILITY ENGINEERING – USER,
TASK AND ENVIRONMENT ANALYSIS
STAGE – TASK ANALYSIS CONT..
Rules in conducting the task analysis
• It being done towards the existing system/situation, not envisaging new systems/devices

There are 3 ways in satisfying the rules above in conducting the task analysis

Option 1 Option 2 Option 3

OR OR
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USABILITY ENGINEERING – USER,
TASK AND ENVIRONMENT ANALYSIS
STAGE – TASK ANALYSIS CONT..
One of the technique use in conducting task analysis is Hierarchical Task Analysis
(HTA)
HTA is a commonly used means of breaking tasks down into a hierarchy of goals,
operations (actions) and plans
It involves breaking a task down into subtasks and then into sub – subtasks
Focus on physical and observable actions performed
Procedure in carrying out the HTA activities
The format involve 3 component
Goals – the state/task/activities/events that the user want to achieve (it’s a verb-noun pair)
Task & subtask – the activity/steps required in order to achieve the goals
Plan – it’s a conditional statement that describe any pause, any skip, any loop that might happen between the activity

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USABILITY ENGINEERING – USER,
TASK AND ENVIRONMENT ANALYSIS
STAGE – TASK ANALYSIS CONT..
• In writing up plan for the HTA, there are type of plan that can be written up in the HTA, such as
• Sequence
• Eg: do 1.1 then 1.2 then 1.3
• Optional
• Eg: if the pot is full do 2
• Wait
• Eg: When kettle boil, do 4
• Cycles
• Eg: Do 5.1, 5.2 while there are still empty cups
• Parallel
• Eg: Do 1; at the same time ….
• Discretionary / Optional
• Eg: Do any of 1.3.1,1.3.2 or 1.3.3 in any order

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 USABILITY ENGINEERING – USER,
TASK AND ENVIRONMENT ANALYSIS
STAGE – TASK ANALYSIS CONT..
2 ways in creating the diagram for the HTA
 Graphical representation  Textual representation

0. Cook Food
1. prepare meal
Goal 2. Put meal in oven
3. Select programme
3.1 Set to auto sensor
3.2 Set to defrost
3.3 Set timer to cook
4. Listen for bell to ring
5. Remove meal

Plan 0: Do 1-2-3-4 in order but when bell rings do 5 first

Task & sub task Plan 30
USABILITY ENGINEERING – USER,
TASK AND ENVIRONMENT ANALYSIS
STAGE – TASK ANALYSIS CONT..
After finish the diagram conduct the analysis towards it by using the matrix. The
matrix has 3 criteria use for the analysis which is
 Criticality
 Difficulty
 Frequency

This criteria are being evaluate by H- high, M- medium and L - low

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USABILITY ENGINEERING – USER,
TASK AND ENVIRONMENT ANALYSIS
STAGE – TASK ANALYSIS CONT..
Example of the matrix

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USABILITY ENGINEERING – USER,
TASK AND ENVIRONMENT ANALYSIS
STAGE – TASK ANALYSIS CONT..
Next step is to analyze the matrix before writing out the impact of it.
Analysis Example : Based on the matrix above there are 2 issues found which is
The user have a bit problem in figuring out how to work with the select programme button. There is
no clear indication to user that the user must select only one function under the select programme and
not selecting all to make it to work
Among the 3 function under the programme the set time to cook function it the hardest since the user
are unclear either the user need to set the time using seconds or minutes straight away.

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USABILITY ENGINEERING – USER,
TASK AND ENVIRONMENT ANALYSIS
STAGE – TASK ANALYSIS CONT..
The last is writing up the impact. Which is the requirement that might have ‘emerged
from the activities. Example:
 The need for a highly learnable means for selecting a programme
 The need for a caption to indicate to enter the timer in what format, seconds or minutes.

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USABILITY ENGINEERING – USER,
TASK AND ENVIRONMENT ANALYSIS
STAGE – TASK ANALYSIS CONT..
Summary of the teaching points
•Information for task analysis can be drawn from existing documentation, observation
of workers doing the tasks, or from interviews with workers and domain experts.
•This can guide the choice of functionality and the objects and actions
implementation within the system

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PRACTICE TIME…
Your team has been asked to develop a student attendance system for a
private college which deals with updating new attendance, modifying
attendance, generating attendance list and viewing of attendance list.
Produce a Hierarchical Task Analysis (HTA) in a form of chart or textual
notation for any of the processes of your choice from the above scenario. In
your answer, state clearly the processes involved and any assumptions that
you have.

Note: You can refer to the next slide to see the complete cycle in doing it.

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 1

2
Analysis : The user have a bit problem in figuring
out how to work with the select programme

3
button. There is no clear indication to user that
the user must select only one function under the
select programme and not selecting all to make it
to work

Some requirements that might have ‘emerged’

from carrying out this Task analysis:
• The need for a distinctive, but not
annoying, bell sound
• The need for an easily accessible
mechanism for opening the door
• The need for a highly learnable
(guessable) means of selecting a
programme

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QUESTION AND ANSWER
SESSION

Q&A
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