Sep 6 - Yeap, part 5 Methods of Usability Inspection; Usability Inspection Criteria for e-Learning Portals

Part 5: Methods of Usability Inspection

Usability Inspection Criteria for e-Learning Portals.
TeckChong Yeap.
MDP7515 PROJECT
Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of
Master of Multimedia (E-Learning Technologies)

MULTIMEDIA UNIVERSITY
MALAYSIA
October 2008

Methods of Usability Inspection


Most Popular Usability Inspection Methods

Hollingsed and Novick (2007) stated that heuristic evaluation and cognitive walkthrough appeared to be the most actively used and researched techniques.

Heuristic Evaluation

Heuristic evaluation is also found to be an economical and relatively easy usability evaluation method.
Ssemugabi & de Villiers (2007) had concluded in their research of usability on e-learning applications that heuristic evaluation which was conducted by a competent group of experts, was an appropriate, efficient, and highly effective usability evaluation method for elearning applications.

Heuristic evaluation could also be done with a web-based tool.
Ardito et al (2006) had used Systematic Usability Inspection Tool (SUIT) to help the evaluation conduct the heuristic evaluation. SUIT is an Internet-based tool that supports the evaluators during the usability inspection of software applications.
SUIT makes it possible to reach inspectors everywhere, guiding them in their activities. 4 major processes involved with heuristic evaluation aided with SUIT are:
1. Inspection planning
2. Problem detection
3. Report collection
4. Discussion.

Cognitive Walkthrough

“Cognitive walkthrough is a usability inspection method that evaluates the design of a user interface for its ease of exploratory learning, based on a cognitive model of learning and use. The process of the cognitive walkthrough comprises a preparatory phase and an analysis phase. During the preparatory phase, the experimenters determine the interface to be used, its likely users, the task, and the actions to be taken during the task.” (Hollingsed & Novick, 2007)

During the analysis phase, the usability evaluators would carry out the four steps (Lewis & Polson, 1991):
1. The user sets a goal that is to be completed within the system.
2. The user determines the existing available actions.
3. The user selects the action which will take him closer to his goal.
4. The user does the action and evaluates the feedback from the system.

Pluralistic Walkthrough

Pluralistic usability walkthrough (Bias, 1994) is usability walkthrough which incorporates usability experts, product developers, members of the product team and representative users in the process.

Pluralistic usability walkthrough has five characteristics:
1. Inclusion of usability professionals, representative users and product developers.
2. The application’s screens are similar to how they would appear to the user.
3. All evaluators would assume the role of the user.
4. Evaluators write down what actions they, as users, would take for each screen before the group discusses the screens.
5. During discussion of each screen, the representative users would speak first. (Hollingsed and Novick, 2007)

Formal Usability Inspection

Formal usability inspection is a review by the interface designer and his or her peers of users’ potential task performance (Kahn & Prail, 1994). The reviewers consist of usability experts, the review can be quicker, more thorough, and more technical than in the pluralistic walkthrough. The goal is to identify the maximum number of defects in the user interface. Formal usability inspections require definitions of user profiles and task scenarios. (Hollingsed & Novick, 2007)

Empirical Usability Evaluation

Empirical usability evaluation is an approach that is very different from usability inspection.

Wiberg (2003) stated examples of empirical usability evaluation were (a) think-aloud protocol, (b) use data collection, (c) clinical experiments, (d) surveys and questionnaires, (e) interviews.

Clinical experiments emphasized on statistics for measured clinical aspects such as eye gaze, heart rate, skin color and body heat.

“Both user testing… and heuristic evaluation… can be considered as interface debugging tests with respect to their positioning in the usability engineering lifecycle… Their goal is to find and document as many usability problems in a user interface design as possible so that the problems can be corrected in future versions… user testing is based on bringing real users in and observing them as they interact with the…” (Nielsen & Landauer, 1993a)
User testing is generally more time consuming and often conducted in usability lab. Parameters of usability testing include time to perform specific task, number of clicks, time to download and time of screen viewing.