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2. Usability

2.1. Introduction

In English, the verb use can be traced back to the Latin verb utor, which can mean employ, profit by, take advantage of, or enjoy. Usability is the degree to which something is able or fit to be used. Not everything that is able to be used is fit to be used. What makes a system fit for use? What makes it usable? The goal of this module is to provide you with the tools you need to begin answering those questions.

2.2. Required Reading

Please read the items in the list of required readings below. If you are in CSCI 6800, then there may be some additional required readings.

Required Reading for Everyone

  1. Donald A. Norman. Chapter 2: The Psychology of Everyday Actions. In The Design of Everyday Things, pages 36–73. Basic Books, New York, New York, Revised and Expanded Edition edition, 2013.

  2. I. Scott MacKenzie. Chapter 2: The Human Factor. In Human-Computer Interaction: An Empirical Research Perspective, pages 27–67. Morgan Kaufmann, Amsterdam, 2013.

  3. Ben Shneiderman, Catherine Plaisant, Maxine Cohen, Steven Jacobs, Niklas Elmqvist, and Nicholas Diakopoulos. Chapter 2: Universal Usability. In Designing the User Interface. Pearson, Boston, 6 edition, 2017.

  4. Ben Shneiderman, Catherine Plaisant, Maxine Cohen, Steven Jacobs, Niklas Elmqvist, and Nicholas Diakopoulos. Chapter 3: Guidelines, Principles, and Theories. In Designing the User Interface. Pearson, Boston, 6 edition, 2017.

Required Reading for CSCI 4800H and CSCI 6800

  1. Hugh Dubberly, Paul Pangaro, and Usman Haque. ON MODELING: What is Interaction? Are There Different Types? Interactions, 16(1):69–75, January 2009. doi:10.1145/1456202.1456220.

Optional Further Reading

  1. Alan Cooper. 2004. The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity. Sams – Pearson Education, Indianapolis, IN. ISBN 9780672326141.

2.3. Key Terms

guidelines

Low-level focused advice about good practices and cautions against dangers [M2:1].

Example: Section 508 Guidelines

Under Section 508 (29 U.S.C. § 794d), agencies must give employees with disabilities and members of the public access to information that is comparable to the access available to others. The government provides general compliance information here, and the actual text of the guidelines can be found here.

Example: Graph Guidelines

In [M2:2], the authors present five guidelines for the construction of a graph, defined by the authors as, “a paper or electronic representation of numeric analog data with multiple data points.” In [M2:3], the same authors present four guidelines for facilitating visual momentum, a design solution to the problem of becoming cognitively last as one traverses through an app. Many more usedul guidelines are presented as well.

Note

In general, Engineering Psychology and Human Performance [M2:4] (i.e., the book containing [M2:2] and [M2:3]) is a great resource; however, at the time of this writing, only the third edition (2000) is available via UGA GIL-Find.

See also

gulf of evaluation

Reflects the amount of effort that a person must make to to interpret the physical state of the device and to determine how the expectations and intentions have been met [M2:5].

gulf of execution

Reflects the difference between the intentions of the users and what the system allows them to do or how well the system supports those actions [M2:5].

personas

Fictional users whose goals and characteristics represent the needs of some non-fictional user population.

principles

Middle-level strategies or rules to analyze and compare design alternatives [M2:1].

See also

seven stages of action

A theoretical framework that helps us create conceptual models to investigate human actions. It describes the relationship between goals and the physical actions to achieve those goals [M2:5].

Goals

  1. Goal (form the goal)

Execution

  1. Plan (the action)

  2. Specify (the action sequence)

  3. Perform (the action sequence)

Evaluation

  1. Perceive (the state of the world)

  2. Interpret (the perception)

  3. Compare (the outcome with the goal)

theories

High-level widely applicable frameworks to draw on during design and evaluation as well as to support communication and teaching. Theories can also be predictive, such as those for pointing times by individuals or posting rates for community discussions [M2:1].

See also

theoretical construct

A theory, model, framework, or instrument developed through application of some rigorous empirical or theoretical approach [PR:1].

2.4. References

M2:1(1,2,3)

Ben Shneiderman, Catherine Plaisant, Maxine Cohen, Steven Jacobs, Niklas Elmqvist, and Nicholas Diakopoulos. 2017. Chapter 1: Designing the User Interface. Pearson, Boston, 6 edition. ISBN 978-0134380384.

M2:2(1,2)

Christopher D. Wickens, Justin G. Hollands, Simon Banbury, and Raja Parasuraman. Chapter 4: Spatial Displays. In Engineering Psychology and Human Performance. Psychology Press, August 2015.

M2:3(1,2)

Christopher D. Wickens, Justin G. Hollands, Simon Banbury, and Raja Parasuraman. Chapter 5: Spatial Cognition, Navigation, and Manual Control. In Engineering Psychology and Human Performance. Psychology Press, August 2015.

M2:4(1,2)

Christopher D. Wickens, Justin G. Hollands, Simon Banbury, and Raja Parasuraman. August 2015. Engineering Psychology and Human Performance. Psychology Press. doi:10.4324/9781315665177.

M2:5(1,2,3,4)

Donald A. Norman. 2013. Chapter 1: The Design of Everyday Things. Basic Books, New York, New York, Revised and Expanded Edition edition. ISBN 978-0-465-05065-9.

M2:6

Ben Shneiderman. Promoting Universal Usability with Multi-Layer Interface Design. In Proceedings of the 2003 Conference on Universal Usability, CUU '03, 1–8. New York, NY, USA, 2002. Association for Computing Machinery. doi:10.1145/957205.957206.

M2:7

Ben Shneiderman, Catherine Plaisant, Maxine Cohen, Steven Jacobs, Niklas Elmqvist, and Nicholas Diakopoulos. Chapter 3.3.4: The Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design. In Designing the User Interface. Pearson, Boston, 6 edition, 2017.

M2:8

JoAnn Hackos. 1998. User and Task Analysis for Interface Design. Wiley, New York. ISBN 978-0-471-17831-6.