Usability

Screen design: composing with dynamic symmetry

by Eugene Ch'ng

Screen design: a dynamic symmetry grid based approach

by Eugene Ch'ng

Screen design with dynamic symmetry: A discovery

by Eugene Ch'ng

The effect of violating visual conventions of a website on user performance and disorientation. How bad can it be?

by Luis Santa Maria

This experiment investigates what happens to user performance
and disorientation when visual conventions of a... more This experiment investigates what happens to user performance
and disorientation when visual conventions of a genre are
violated. It also looks at what happens to the user performance
and disorientation over time. Twenty-eight participants were
randomly allocated to two independent groups: one was tested
with a conventional website and the other with a convention violating website.

The study comprised of two parts and on each
part participants were tested on a different website. Results
showed that in the first part participants who used the violating
site performed worse and were more disoriented than participants
who used the conventional version. But the performance of the
participants of the convention-violating group improved over time
so that by the end of the first part performance on both groups were equivalent. In the second part performance and disorientation on both groups were equivalent suggesting that users might rapidly adapt to visual convention violations.

UPDATE: A usability analysis method and tool.

by Rebecca Grier

Coauhtored with Colona-Romano, J., & Freeman, J. Published in the 2007 Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting in Baltimore, MD.

EFFECTS OF SELF SELECTION IN ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN PROCESS (ADP); CONSIDERING USER CENTERED DESIGN (UCD)

by Mahdi Torabi

Mahdi Torabi, Mahmud Jusan and Alireza. Daneshpour
International Conference On Innovation and Technology For Sustainable Built Environment (ICITSBE2012), Universiti Teknologi MARA (Perak), Malaysia, Apr. 2012

Diversity of human requirements in his living environment is obvious. Architecture ideal is to respond such these... more Diversity of human requirements in his living environment is obvious. Architecture ideal is to respond such these various requirements. The Architectural Design Process (ADP) which has been defined for this basic purpose aims at fulfilling not only physical and functional but also psychological human necessities. Recent trends in architectural design show that in most of the cases, the focus of ADP has been shifted to the business goals, fancy features and technological capabilities. Even if none of these approaches can be blamed, but what has been lost here is a mere respect to human values. In this regard, paying attention to end-users’ ideas, believes, attitudes and desires, which has been named self-selection in this paper, can be considered as an appropriate method for deriving final users’ values. In fact, User-Centered Design (UCD) is a format of self-selection which focuses on designer’s side. UCD attaches importance to architectural plan as an output. This type of architectural plan tries to adopt with final users’ requests, wishes, feelings, behaviors and life styles. Inspiring from the concept, some different methods have been driven. Designing according to UCD principles and basics contributes architectural plan to be more satisfactory and desirable by the users since they would able to realize their ideas. In addition, this kind of ADP encourages end-users to personalize more eagerly their surrounding built environment. Ultimately, the users would feel more comfortable and convenience in his living space. In this respect, not only designers but also the users share the same amount of satisfaction.

What’s in a Name? Using Card Sorting to Evaluate Branding in an Academic Library’s Web Site

by Peter Hepburn

Co-authored with Krystal M. Lewis.  Published in College & Research Libraries, May 2008, Vol. 69, No. 3

Libraries are pressed to effectively promote use of the tools they provide users as well as their role in creating,... more Libraries are pressed to effectively promote use of the tools they provide users as well as their role in creating, selecting, and purchasing them.  Applying “brand names” generated within the library is one promotional strategy. Usability testing at one academic library demonstrated how the card sorting technique can be used to evaluate branding efforts.The study found that library users do not recognize or comprehend library brand names in the absence of a consistent approach to branding even if they do use the services that have been branded.

L'informazione taskabile. Corriere.it, Repubblica.it, Affaritaliani e ilNuovo testati con i metodi della web usabili.

by Francesco Mazzucchelli

Co-authored with Marco Vanoli

An empirical study on the usability of an information navigation aid

by Feliz Gouveia

The Unlikeability of a Cuddly Toy Interface: An Experimental Study of Preschoolers' Likeability and Usability of a 3D Game Played with a Cuddly Toy Versus a …

by Bieke Zaman

Representing Clarity:  Using Universal Design Principles to Create Effective Hybrid Course Learning Materials

by Cheri Lemieux Spiegel

Teaching English in the Two-Year College.  Forthcoming.

Location aware mobile interactive guides: usability issues

by Patrizia Marti

PADRÃO DAISY 3 ou NORMA ANSI/NISO Z39. 86-2002–SOLUÇÃO UNIVERSAL?

by Ana Isabel B. B. Paraguay

Is Visualization Usable for Display Web Search Results in an Exploratory Search Context?

by Aline Crédeville

Usability of Geographic Information; Current Challenges and Future Directions

by Christopher Parker

With the editor ahead of publication in Applied Ergonomics.

Co-authored with Brown M., Sharples S., Harding J., Parker C. J., Bearman N., Maguire M., D. Forrest, M. Haklay and M. Jackson.

The use of Geographic Information or GI, has grown rapidly in recent years.  Previous research has identified the... more The use of Geographic Information or GI, has grown rapidly in recent years.  Previous research has identified the importance of usability and user centred design in enabling the proliferation and exploitation of GI.  However, the design and development of usable GI is not simply a matter of applying the tried and tested usability methods that have been developed for software and web design.  Dealing with data and specifically GI brings with it a number of issues that change the way usability and user centred design can be applied.  This paper describes the outcomes of a workshop held in March 2010 exploring the core issues relating GI usability.  The workshop brought together an international group of twenty experts in both human factors and GI, from a wide range of academic and industrial backgrounds.  These experts considered three key issues, the stakeholders in GI, key challenges applying usability to GI and the usability methods that can be successfully applied to GI.  The result of this workshop was to identify some areas for future research in this area, such as the proliferation of metadata and the implications of blurring of the line between data producers and data consumers.

Measuring usability of educational computer games based on the user success rate

by Marina Ismail

Embracing interdependence: Technology developers, autistic users, and technical communicators

by Kimberly Elmore

forthcoming in Rhetorical accessAbility: At the intersection of technical communication and disability studies, L. Melancon (Ed.), Baywood, 2012

Designing user interactions and experiences: The terminology of User Experience Design and related areas

by David Smehlik

The thesis is unfortunately in czech language only.

This thesis discusses terminology used in the area of designing user interactions and experiences, an area influencing... more This thesis discusses terminology used in the area of designing user interactions and experiences, an area influencing our everyday lives. To be specific, it focuses on five selected fields: user experience design, interaction design, user interface design, user-centered design and human-computer interaction. The reason for this selection is a confusion in terminology caused by mutual substitutions of the terms and their insensitive misinterpretation. In five individual chapters, the paper clarifies what exactly each term describes and where its boundaries are. With the help of examples illustrating improper application of the terms, we identify the discrepancies between different ways of employing them and try to formulate probable causes of it. Every chapter contains a comparison of the fields and an attempt to devise a Czech equivalent for the term concerned. Throughout the thesis we stumble across additional terms from the same milieu such as empathic design, non intentional design, service design and others. The paper also provides wealth of relevant context and background information.

Design implications for digital scratch-card games

by Janne Paavilainen

Decision support for acute problems: The role of the standardized patient in usability testing

by Blackford Middleton