Usability evaluation

¿? Why, what, where and when to evaluate ¿?

This is a brief post about usability evaluation, task that we did this semester to evaluate our high-fidelity protoype.

WHY

Because we wanted to find the usability problems of our design we carried out a usability test in order that users can use the software and like it (in short "check users' requirements").

WHAT

In our case, an early prototype of the new system. Actually, the proto is not so early, since we did one previous paper prototype to this mock-up.

WHERE

In natural place, for us were the technical schools, ours and the participants. 

WHEN 

Throughout design of the software product.

All these questions due to the iterative design is a continuous process. From the beginning to the final product and beyond as finished products can be evaluated to gather useful information on upcoming new products.

Within the usability evaluation techniques, they can be classified into:

• Analytical evaluation: Is a sability evaluation without users.
• Usability testing: Is a evaluation with representative users.
• Performance measurement
• Thinking aloud protocol
• Laboratory testing
• Field testing
• Wizard of Oz
• Pluralistic walkthrough
• Controlled experiments

We used the thinking aloud technique and we had the chance to find out first hand how our users(Chinese students) use the software product :)  as a result we got a  list of usability problems; quantitative data on time, eror and other performance measures; our recorded/written remarks; and participants' remarks gathered from questionnaires.

• Follow-up studies of installed systems: It requires a system already working.
• Focus groups
• Automatic loggin
• Surveys and interviews

Next post about integration of usability practices in software development ...