Oct 23 - Borrowed 12 books from MMU Library

Richard MANDER, and Bud Smith. Web Usability for Dummies. Hungry Minds, New York, 2002.
TK 5105.888 .M36 2002

Jakob NIELSEN, and Hoa Loranger. Prioritizing Web Usability. New Riders, Berkeley, California, 2006.
TK 5105.888 .N54 2006

Jakob NIELSEN. Designing Web Usability. New Riders, Indianapolis, Indiana, 2000.
TK 5105.888 .N54 2000

Christian LINDHOLM, Turkka Keinonen, Harri Kiljander. Mobile Usability: How Nokia Changed the Face of Mobile Phone. McGraw-Hill, New York, 2003.
TK 6570 .M6 M63 2003

Mark PEARROW. The Wireless Web Usability Handbook. Charles River Media, Hingham, Massachusetts, 2002.
TK 5105.888 .P43 2002

Jeffrey RUBIN. Handbook of Usability Testing. John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1994.
QA 76.9 .U83 R83 1994

Matt JONES, and Gary Marsden. Mobile Interaction Design. John Wiley & Sons, West Sussex, England, 2006.
TK 6570 .M6 J66 2006

Tom BRINCK, Darren Gergle, Scott D. Wood. Usability For The Web: Designing Web Sites That Work. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, San Francisco, California, 2002.
TK 5105.888 .B75 2002

Ameeta D. JADAV. Designing Usable Web Interfaces. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, 2003.
TK 5105.888 .J33 2003

Deborah J. MAYHEW. The Usability Engineering Lifecycle: A Practitioner's Handbook for User Interface Design. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, San Francisco, 1999.
QA 76.9 .U83 M39 1999

Randolf G. BIAS, and Deborah J. Mayhew (editors). Cost-Justifying Usability: An Update for an Internet Age, Second Edition. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, San Francisco, California, 2005.
QA 76.9 .U83 C67 2005

John EGAN. Relationship Marketing: Exploring relational strategies in marketing, Third Edition. Pearson Education Limited, Essex, England, 2008.
HF 5415.55 .E33 2008

Aug 29 - Jokela et al, ..Standard Definition of Usability: Analyzing ISO 13407 against ISO

The Standard of User-Centered Design and the Standard Definition of Usability: Analyzing ISO13407 against ISO9241-11.
Timo Jokela, Netta Iivari. Oulu University, P.O. Box 3000, 90014 Oulu, Finland. +358 8 5531011 {timo.jokela, mailto:netta.iivari%7D@oulu.fi
Juha Matero, Minna Karukka. Nokia, P.O. Box 50, 90571 Oulu, Finland. {juha.p.matero, mailto:minna.karukka%7D@nokia.com

ABSTRACT
ISO 9241-11 and ISO 13407 are two important standards related to usability: the former one provides the definition of usability and the latter one guidance for designing usability. We carried out an interpretative analysis of ISO 13407 from the viewpoint of the standard definition of
usability from ISO 9241-11. The results show that ISO 13407 provides only partly guidance for designing usability as presumed by the definition. Guidance for describing users and environments are provided but very limited guidance is provided for the descriptions of user goals and usability measures, and generally for the process of producing the various outcomes.

Probably the best known definition of usability is by Nielsen: usability is about learnability, efficiency, memorability, errors, and satisfaction [16].

However, the definition of usability from ISO 9241-11 (Guidance on usability) [11] – “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” - is becoming the main reference of usability.

In addition that it is largely recognized in literature, this ‘standard’ definition of usability is used in the recent Common Industry Format, CIF, for usability testing [1].

To improve the usability of software and information systems, the paradigm of user-centered design1, UCD, has been proposed by a number of method and methodology books, starting from Nielsen [16] to ones published in late 90’s, [8], [4], [5], [15] and ending up with a set of very recent ones, [17] and [18].

1 Called ‘human-centered design’ in ISO 13407. Also called ‘usability engineering’.

My Comments: I think this article is a good resource for "Definition of Usability."

ISO 13407 [9], Human-centred design processes for interactive systems, is a standard that provides guidance for user-centered design. ...it describes usability at a level of principles, planning and activities. A third important aspect is that ISO 13407 explicitly uses the standard definition of usability from ISO 9241-11 as a reference for usability.

Usability is defined in ISO 9241-11 [11] as follows:
Usability: 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.
The terms are further defined as follows:
Effectiveness: the accuracy and completeness with which users achieve specified goals
Efficiency: the resources expended in relation to the accuracy and completeness with which users achieve goals
Satisfaction: freedom from discomfort, and positive attitude to the use of the product
Context of use: characteristics of the users, tasks and the organizational and physical environments
Goal: intended outcome
Task: activities required to achieve a goal

Generally, this definition of usability is a ‘broad’ approach to usability [2]: usability is about supporting users in achieving their goals in their work, it is not only a characteristic of a user interface.

..usability is a function of users of a product or a system (specified users). Further, for each user, usability is a function of achieving goals in terms of a set of attributes (i.e. effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction) and environment of use.

As an example, one usability measure of a bank machine
could be: • 90 % users achieve the goal (Es) in less than 1 minute (Ey) with an average satisfaction rating ‘6’ (S) when users are novice ones (U), and they want to have a desired sum of cash withdrawn (G) with any bank machine (Et).

The analysis of the definition of usability shows that one needs to determine the following outocomes when the definition is used in a development project:
(1) The users of the system,
(2) Goals of users,
(3) Environments of use
(4) Measures of effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction.

ISO 13407 is aimed to provide ‘overview’ guidance for the planning and management of user-centered design, not to provide detailed coverage of the methods and technique.

ISO 13407 is an international standard established in 1999. The standard “provides guidance on humancentred design activities throughout the life cycle of computer-based interactive systems”. The standard aims at “those managing design processes” and does not provide detailed coverage of methods and techniques.

ISO 13407 describes user-centered design from four
different aspects:
• Rationale for UCD
• Planning UCD
• Principles of UCD
• Activities of UCD.

Rationale. The rationale part briefly describes the benefits that usable systems provide, such as reduction of training and support costs, improved user satisfaction and productivity of users.

Principles. The standard identifies four general principles that characterize user-centered design, and that are not bound to any specific phase of development cycle:
• The active involvement of users and a clear understanding of user and task requirements
• An appropriate allocation of functions between users and technology
• Iteration of design solutions
• Multi-disciplinary design.

Planning. The planning part provides guidance in fitting user-centered design activities into the overall system development process. Among other things, the standard emphasizes that project plans should reserve time and resources for iteration and user feedback. The importance of teamwork and communication is also mentioned.

Activities. The core of the standard – stated explicitly– is the description of user-centered design activities. The standard identifies four main activities of UCD, illustrated
in Figure 2:

Understand and Specify Context of Use. Know the user, the environment of use, and the tasks that he or she uses the product for.
Specify the User and Organizational Requirements. Determine the success criteria of usability for the product in terms of user tasks, e.g. how quickly a typical user should be able to complete a task with the product.
Determine the design guidelines and constraints. Produce Design Solutions. Incorporate HCI knowledge (of visual design, interaction design, usability) into design solutions.
Evaluate Designs against Requirements. The usability of designs is evaluated against user tasks.

Usability is one type of a quality characteristic in a product [10] among others, such as functionality, efficiency, reliability, maintainability and portability. In the requirement phase, when the quality requirements for a product are determined, also the usability requirements should be determined.
While all activities of life-cycle are relevant in the design of usability, the definition of usability has a critical impact especially in the requirements phase of a development project. The outcomes of these requirements activities (identification of users, goals, environments, usability measures) provide direction for the design phase and basis for planning evaluations.

In practice, Nielsen’s attributes as such are too ambiguous to be used in determining the usability requirements.

My Comments: This part of the article, particularly on User-Centred Design, is good on the process of applying usability throughout the entire design and development process.

Understand and specify the context of use
The standard describes the activity ‘Understand and
specify the context of use’ as follows:
The characteristics of the users, tasks and the organizational and physical environment define the context in which the system is used. It is important to understand and identify the details of this context in order to guide early design decisions, and to provide a basis for evaluation.
Information should be gathered about the context of use of new products and systems. If an existing system is upgraded or enhanced, this information may already be available but should be checked. If there are extensive results form user feedback, help desk reports and other data, these provide a basis fro prioritizing user requirements for system modifications and changes.
The context in which the system is to be used should be identified in terms of the following:
a) The characteristics of the intended users: relevant characteristics of the users can include knowledge, skill, experience, education, training, physical
attributes, habits, preferences and capabilities. If necessary, define the characteristics of different types of users, for example, with different levels of
experience of performing different roles (maintainers, installers, etc).
b) The tasks the users are to perform: the description should include the overall goals of the use of the system. The characteristics of tasks that can influence usability should be described, e.g. the frequency and the duration of performance”…. Tasks should not be described solely in terms of the functions or features.
c) The environment in which the users are to use the system: the environment includes the hardware, software and materials to be used. Their description
can be in terms of a set of products, one or more of which can be the focus of human-centred specification or evaluation, or it can be in terms of a set of
attributes or performance characteristics of the hardware, software and other materials. Relevant characteristics of the physical and social environment
should also be described. These can include relevant standards, attributes of the wider technical environment, the physical, ambient, legislative and the social and cultural environment.

The output from this activity should be a description of the relevant characteristics of users, tasks and environment, which identifies what aspects have an important impact on the system design. (See ISO 9241-11 for more information about the context of use and a sample report.)
The context of use description should
a) Specify the range of intended users, tasks and environments in sufficient detail to support design activity;
b) Be derived from suitable sources;
c) Be confirmed by users or if they are not available, by those representing their interests in the process;
d) Be adequately documented;
e) Be made available to the design team at appropriate times and in appropriate forms to support design activities.

Specify the user and organizational requirements
In most design processes, there is a major activity specifying the functional and other requirements for the product or system. For human-centred design, this activity should be extended to create an explicit statement of user and organizational requirements in relation to the context of use description. The following aspects should
be considered in order to identify relevant requirements:
a) Required performance of the new system against operational and financial objectives;
b) Relevant statutory or legislative requirements, including safety and health;
c) Co-operation and communication between users and other relevant parties;
d) The users’ jobs (including allocation of tasks, users’ well-being, and motivation);
e) Task performance;
f) Work design and organization;
g) Management of change, including training and personnel to be involved;
h) Feasibility of operation and maintenance;
i) The human-computer interface and workstation design.
User and organizational requirements should be derive and objectives set with appropriate trade-offs identified between the different requirements.
The specification of user and organizational requirements should:
a) Identify the range of relevant users and other personnel in the design;
b) Provide a clear statement of the human-centred design goals;
c) Set appropriate priorities for the different requirements;
d) Provide measurable criteria against which the emerging design can be tested;
e) Be confirmed by the users or those representing their interests in the process;
f) Include any statutory or legislative requirements;
g) Be adequately documented.

ISO 13407 does not address the general complexity and specific challenges related to systematic identification of different users, identification of the different goals that users may have; nor determination of measures (effectiveness, efficiency, satisfaction) of usability. The determination of environments of use is addressed in most detailed manner.

DISCUSSION
ISO 9241-11 and ISO 13407 are two important standards related to usability: the former one provides the definition of usability and the latter one guidance for designing usability. We carried out an interpretive analysis of ISO 13407 from the viewpoint of the standard definition of usability from ISO 9241-11. The results show that ISO 13407 provides only partly guidance for designing usability as presumed by the definition. Guidance for describing users and environments are provided but very limited guidance is provided for the descriptions of user goals and usabilty measures, and generally for the process of producing the various outcomes.

References that I may want to read further in future:

1. ANSI. Common Industry Format for Usability Test Reports., NCITS 354-2001, 2001.

3. Bevan, N., Claridge, N., Maguire, M. and Athousaki, M., Specifying and evaluating usability requirements using the Common Industry Format: Four case studies. in IFIP 17th World Computer Conference 2002 - TC 13 Stream on Usability: Gaining a Competitive Edge, (Montreal, Canada, 2002), Kluwer Academic Publishers, 133-148.

8. Hix and Hartson. Developing User Interfaces: Ensuring Usability Through Product & Process.
John Wiley & Sons, 1993.
9. ISO/IEC. 13407 Human-Centred Design Processes for Interactive Systems, ISO/IEC 13407: 1999 (E), 1999.

12. Jokela, T., Making User-Centred Design Common Sense: Striving for an Unambiguous
and Communicative UCD Process Model. in NordiCHI 2002, (Aarhus, Denmark, 2002), ACM, 19-26.
13. Jokela, T. and Iivari, N., Systematic Determination of Quantitative Usability Requirements. in to be published in the proceedings of HCI International 2003, (Crete, 2003).

15. Mayhew, D.J. The Usability Engineering Lifecycle. Morgan Kaufman, San Fancisco,
1999.
16. Nielsen, J. Usability Engineering. Academic Press, Inc., San Diego, 1993.
17. Rosson, M.B. and Carroll, J.M. Usability Engineering. Scenario-Based Development of Human-Computer Interaction. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2002.

Aug 28 - Su, Usability Guidelines for Designing Mobile Learning Portals

Usability Guidelines for Designing Mobile Learning Portals.
Daniel Su Kuen Seong. The University of Nottingham, Malaysia. Jalan Broga, 43500 Semenyih, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia. +603-89248138 daniel.su@nottingham.edu.my

Mobility 06, Oct. 25–27, 2006, Bangkok, Thailand.
The 3rd International Conference on Mobile Technology, Applications and Systems — Mobility 2006.

Abstract
Mobile learning presumes the use of mobile Internet technology to facilitate the learning process. The growth and rapid evolution of the wireless technology have created new opportunities for anytime and anywhere learning paradigm. As a result, numerous mobile learning portals have been developed to gain the advantages of it. Nonetheless, there is little research and exploration has been initiated in proposing usability guidelines in designing mobile learning portals to achieve efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction of learning. Thus, this paper seeks to present usability guidelines by grounding the user interface on usability theoretical framework, possible constraints, and unique properties of mobile computing. Three categories of usability have been formulated: user analysis, interaction and interface design. Ten golden usability guidelines have been suggested which aims for designing highly efficacious, user friendly and usable mobile interface to support dynamicity of mobile and handheld devices. Moreover, Mobile Learning Course Manager (MLCM) portal has been developed to demonstrate and exemplify the usability guidelines proposed.

This integration of technologies has altered considerably the instructional strategies in our educational institutions and changed the way teachers teach and students learn [2]. ... Some noticeable examples with the use of technologies in educational context are multimedia learning, World Wide Web or web/Internet-based learning, e-Learning, and in recent years, the mobile learning.

Mobile learning has been perceived by many educationalists to offer flexibility in learning and
present a multitude yet unique educational advantages [5]. The rapid evolving of the wireless communication and demanding for the low-cost of mobile devices potentially direct many researchers and educationalists to move from web-based and e-Learning to mobile learning which promising easy and convenient ways of learning.
One distinct feature of mobile learning over e-Learning is mobility [6]. Hence, researchers and scholars are becoming enthusiastically in coining the term ‘mobile learning or m-learning’, such as ‘mobile learning as the point at which mobile computing and e-Learning intersect to produce an anytime, anywhere learning experience [7].
According to Nyiri [8], m-learning is fundamentally e-Learning delivered through mobile computational devices such as Palms, Personal Digital Assistants (PDA), Pocket PCs, smart phone, digital cell phones, and any other handheld devices. The use of mobile devices with the wireless network technology flourishes mobile learners to get convenience, expediency and immediacy of mobile learning in appropriate time and accessing the appropriate learning contents [7].
Additionally, mobile learning is the next generation of e-Learning and important instrument for lifelong learning [49].


The term usability is defined as by The International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) ISO 9241-11 [16] as ‘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.’
According to Nielsen [17], usability means the measure of the quality the users’ experience when interacting interface.
...usability is not a surface gloss which applied at the last minutes or before the releases of the system or product; but it is deeply affected by every stage of the analysis, design, and development [18].
Usable systems are easy to learn (learnability), efficient to use (efficiency), easy to remember (memorability), not error-prone (errors), and satisfactory in use (subjective satisfaction) [17].
The ultimate goal of usability is meeting the needs of to users’ satisfaction [17].
..advantages of usability encompass increased productivity, enhanced quality of work, improved user satisfaction, and reductions in support and training costs [19]. The reduction in costs has attracted many project managers and interface designers to employ the theory of usability when designing the interfaces as reported in [20, 21].


Mobile learning appears in any facets of possible variations in context such as locations, environment, conditions, noisy or quiet, weather and so on. Hence, the dynamicity has triggered
additional efforts and investigation in order to design highly usable mobile learning portals to cater for different types of users in the global economy.
Furthermore, the limitation of screen size, the presentation of mobile contents, and adaptation of the information to the sensitivity of context and devices influence the efficiency and effectiveness when learning via the mobile devices.
Hayhoe [23] emphasises that the design criterion of this ubiquitous perspective need to be examined thoroughly and focused as to eliminate boredom and disorientation which involves wide range of users in having variety types of handheld devices.


It is perceptible that little research and exploration has been initiated to propose usability
guidelines in designing mobile learning portals. Moreover, several extensive experiments conducted from 2002 to 2005 discover substantial amount of severe usability problems
pertinent to user behaviour in mobile navigation on mobile Internet portals’ design [24]. Therefore, this has set the directions for this paper to explore the usable guidelines when
designing mobile learning portals by grounding the user interface on usability theoretical framework, possible constraints, and unique properties of mobile computing.

Category Usability Guideline
User Analysis U1
Interaction U2, U3, U4, U5 and U6
Interface design U7, U8, U9 and U10
The usability guidelines are divided into three categories: user analysis, interaction, and interface design.

Guidelines mean ‘rules or principles for action, encapsulating some combination of practitioner determined best practices in a domain and research-based insights into factors relevant in that
domain [25].’
The usability guidelines framework is grounded on the usability theoretical framework discussed in [17], constraints proposed by [22], and understanding of a number of unique properties that are intrinsic to mobile computing as highlighted in [52, 53, 54].

3.1.1 User Analysis
U1: The user/learner

3.1.2 Interaction
U2: Human-mobile interaction
U3: Map between mobile learning portals and the real world
U4: Help users recognise, diagnose, and recover from errors
U5: Visibility of the status
U6: Minimise human cognitive load

3.1.3 Mobile Learning Interface Design
U7: The small screen display
U8: Do not overuse
U9: Navigation
U10: Consistency.

My Comments: Majority of Seong's USABILITY GUIDELINES were taken from Nielsen's TEN HEURISTIC or TEN HEURISTIC PRINCIPLES. Nielsen's 10 were among my "36 USABILITY INSPECTION CRITERIA" for e-Learning Portals. Seong had also the smart thing; take the Usabilty Criteria from a very well-known source. Most researchers would use some, most or all of Nielsen's 10 usability criteria.


Principally MLCM portal’s user interfaces can be perceived usable as the mobile learners or users are considered the most important entity in our design. Much effort has been devoted in analysing and evaluating the mobile learners’ need and caters for beginner, fast acting for a more expert learner, provides efficacious support to the learners’ working needs and is pleasant to use.

CONCLUSIONS
Technological changes and evolution significantly amplifies the demands on the quality and usable user interface and offer the potential to further enhance the task, structure and functionality of mobile devices. The rapidly increased number of mobile learning portals has urged the usability issues to be more transparent when designing the learning portals. This paper contributes ten usability guidelines which envelop user analysis, interaction and user interfaces categories. These usability guidelines empower the effort in creating highly usable and impressive user interface which promote the users’ satisfaction and interactivity while learning via the mobile and handheld devices. In addition, the proposed usability guidelines intend to set as benchmark for interface designers to further evaluate the mobile user interfaces to conform to the attributes of usability when designing usable mobile learning portals. Additionally, MLCM has demonstrated and exemplified the use of usability guidelines proposed which aims to increase the users’ satisfaction especially dealing with the diversify and universal mobile learners who comes from different background, culture, race, educational level, learning cognitive and styles. The simplicity design and ease of use, consistency in navigation, structural metaphoric, and standardised iconic design have promote mobile users’ cognitive and learning styles in accessing and comprehending MLCM to maximise their learning experiences and increase their learning curve indirectly.


Future Directions
we suggest the following for future extensions:
• Examines the usability guidelines by conducting usabilitytesting/evaluation to measure and quantify the theory of usability such as learnability, memorability, efficiency, effectiveness, and subjective satisfaction. The expected results and outcomes are used to prioritise the importance and plot the ranking of it.
• Further evaluation and experiment will be conducted to assess and determine whether the usability guidelines proposed are appropriate and met the basis of formal instructional design strategies, and the mobile curriculum development.
• Enhances the learning portals by extracting the lecture notes and other relevant digital documents, and transmit them to the respective mobile learners.

My Comments: In my Masters research, I measured the relative importance of all the 36 USABILITY INSPECTION CRITERIA (Seong called them Usability Guideline) and ranked them according to the rating of importance. I hope to repeat this for a larger set (36 plus More) of usability criteria for mobile learning.

References that I may want to read further in future:
[16] ISO/IEC, 9241-11 Ergonomic Requirements for Office Work with Visual Display Terminals (VDT)s – Part 11 Guidance on Usability. 1998: ISO/IEC 9241-11: 1998 (E).
[18] Lee, K. B., and Grice, R. A. Developing a New Usability Testing Method for Mobile Devices. In Proceedings of the 23rd International Performance, Computing, and Communications Conference (IPCCC’04). 14-17 April 2004, Phoenix, Arizona, 115-127.
[19] ISO/IEC, 13407. Human-Centred Design Processes for Interactive Systems. 1999: ISO/IEC 13407: 1999(E).
[22] Mayhew, D. J. The Usability Engineering Lifecycle: A Practitioner’s Handbooks for User Interface Design. Morgan Kaufman Publisher, 1999.
[23] Hayhoe, G. F. From desktop to palmtop: Creating usable online documents for wireless and handheld devices. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Professional Communication Conference. Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, 24-27 October 2001.
[24] Kaikkonen, A. Usability problems in today’s mobile Internet portals. In Proceedings of the 2nd IEE International Conference on Mobile Technology, Applications and Systems. 15-17 November 2005, Guangzhou, Chine, 459-464.
[25] Vavoula, G. N., Lefrere, P., O’Malley, C., Sharples, M., and Taylor, J. Producing Guidelines for learning, teaching and tutoring in a mobile environment. In Proceedings of the 2nd IEEE International Workshop on Wireless and Mobile Technologies in Education (WMTE’ 04). 23-25 March 2004, Jhongli, Taiwan, ROC, 173-176.
[30] Su, D. K. S. A comparative evaluation and correlation between learning styles and academic achievement on e-Learning. In Kwan, R., and Fong, J. (Eds.), Proceedings of Web-based Learning: Technology and Pedagogy at The 4th International Conference on Web-based Learning (ICWL’05). 31 July-3 August 2005, Hong Kong, China, World Scientific Publishing, Singapore, 193-202
[39] Kaikkonen, A., and Laarni, J. Designing for small display screens. In Proceedings of the 2nd Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction. Aarhus, Denmark, New York: ACM Press, 19-23 October, 2002, 227- 230.
[42] Su, D. K. S., and Chan, F. C. Navigational patterns on usable mobile news portals. Journal of Internet Technology, 7(3), April 2006, forthcoming.