Efficient methods for rapid evaluation of television (TV) interaction devices are missing. This thesis presents how the Cognitive Walkthrough method can be modified to suit the demands of engineers in a development process. Moreover, the thesis also investigates how Personas can be applied to support the Cognitive Walkthrough method. The Modified Cognitive Walkthrough method was applied and tested in an actual development project on remote control design. The study suggests that the method can detect usability problems on TV interaction devices at an early stage of development. Further, the results indicate that it is easy to understand the method and apply it as part of the engineering practices.

A rápida evolução tecnológica tem proporcionado que a população mundial vivencie novas formas de interação. Um fenômeno que também tem ocorrido em escala global é o envelhecimento populacional, que faz com que grande parte da população seja afetada por limitações decorrentes da idade. Jogos digitais podem oferecer diversos benefícios para um envelhecimento saudável, tais como bem-estar físico e mental, sociabilização com outros jogadores, relaxamento e entretenimento. A literatura apresenta esforços em direção a abordagens visando tornar as aplicações cada vez mais usáveis, por meio de diferentes métodos de avaliação de usabilidade. O Percurso Cognitivo (PC) é um desses métodos, que tem como finalidade a avaliação da facilidade de aprendizado. No entanto, o declínio cognitivo, especialmente quando decorrente do envelhecimento, dificulta o aprendizado pelos usuários. Assim, faz-se necessário uma investigação sobre o método PC para que considere também acessibilidade, devido a barreiras enfrentadas por pessoas idosas. O objetivo deste projeto foi propor um método de avaliação por inspeção, que considere questões de usabilidade e acessibilidade, com ênfase na facilidade de aprendizado, de modo a apoiar desenvolvedores e especialistas nas avaliações de jogos para o público idoso. Assim, foram realizados procedimentos metodológicos, tais como pesquisa bibliográfica e três Estudos de Caso (EC) para embasar o método proposto, nomeado Percurso de Barreiras Cognitivas (PBC). O primeiro EC foi realizado para analisar a aplicação do método PC, bem como identificar as possíveis vulnerabilidades do método ao avaliar jogos tendo como público alvo os idosos. Com base na primeira versão do método PBC, no segundo EC foi analisada sua aplicabilidade e foram coletadas sugestões de melhorias. A segunda versão do PBC foi então desenvolvida. No terceiro EC, foi analisada a viabilidade da aplicação da segunda versão do PBC em uma situação real. Finalmente, por incluir integralmente as questões do método PC tradicional, no PBC é esperado que um mesmo especialista ao avaliar um jogo, encontre (seja com base no PBC ou PC), no mínimo, os mesmos problemas, independente da experiência deste especialista. Foram evidenciadas que as questões e procedimentos do método PBC tendem a auxiliar o especialista a encontrar mais problemas do que encontraria com o método PC tradicional. / Fast technological evolution has provided the world population with new forms of interaction. A phenomenon that also occurred on a global scale is population aging, which causes a large part of the population to be affected by age-related disabilities. Digital games can offer several benefits for healthy aging including improvement of mental and physical condition of their players. Games also help users to improve personal capabilities, to become more sociable and relaxed, and to increase interaction with other users. The literature presents efforts that consider different usability evaluation methods to make applications even more usable, Cognitive Walkthrough (CW) is one of these methods. However, while CW proposes the evaluation of ease of learning, Cognitive decline, especially due aging, hinders users learning. Thus, it is necessary to extend CW, usually applied to usability domain, in order to consider issues involving accessibility. The objective of this project was to propose an inspection method for evaluating games regarding the usability and accessibility issues for the older public, with emphasis on ease of learning. Thus, methodological procedures, such as bibliographic research and three case studies (CS) were used to support the proposed method, called Cognitive Barriers Walkthrough (CBW). The first CS was performed to analyze the application of the CW method, as well to identify its possible vulnerabilities for evaluating games with the target audience as the elderly people. In the second CS, the applicability of the first version of the CBW method was analyzed and suggestions for improvements were collected, and then the second version of CBW was then developed. In the third CS, the feasibility of applying the second version of CBW was analyzed in a real situation. Finally, since the traditional CW questions were all included in CBW, it is expected that the same expert will find at least the same problems, regardless of the evaluators level of expertise. It was evidenced that the questions and procedures of the CBW method tend to help the experts to find more problems than they would find with the traditional CW method.

Visuzalizing time information using a timeline has been done for over 250 years. Using a timeline can assist users in making sense of time data which could otherwise be hard to understand. A timeline has been implemented at Ida Infront, and its purpose is to help managers understand how cases are progressing in a case management system created by Ida Infront. The timeline is designed using usability methods and has been evaluated with regards to its usability and how it interacts. Results show that there are a number of things that can increase usability and add meaningful interaction, such as using icons to collect similar data into one point and adding filtering capabilities so that users can find interesting data faster.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Psychology / John J. Uhlarik / Usability practitioners need effective usability assessment techniques in order to facilitate development of usable consumer products. Many usability evaluation methods have been promoted as the ideal. Few, however, fulfill expectations concerning effectiveness. Additionally, lack of empirical data forces usability practitioners to rely on personal judgments and/or anecdotal statements when deciding upon which usability method best suits their needs. Therefore the present study had two principal objectives: (1) to validate a hybrid usability technique that identifies important and ignores inconsequential usability problems, and (2) to provide empirical performance data for several usability protocols on a variety of contemporary comparative metrics. The User-Centered Hybrid Assessment Tool (User-CHAT) was developed to maximize efficient diagnosis of usability issues from a behaviorally-based perspective while minimizing time and resource limitations typically associated with usability assessment environments. Several characteristics of user-testing, the heuristic evaluation, and the cognitive walkthrough were combined to create the User-CHAT. Prior research has demonstrated that the User-CHAT supports an evaluation within 3-4 hrs, can be used by individuals with limited human factors / usability background, and requires little training to be used competently, even for complex systems. A state-of-the-art suite of avionics displays and a series of benchmark tasks provided the context where the User-CHAT’s performance was measured relative to its parent usability methods. Two techniques generated comparison lists of usability problems – user-testing data and various inclusion criteria for usability problems identified by the User-CHAT, heuristic evaluation, and cognitive walkthrough. Overall the results demonstrated that the User-CHAT attained higher effectiveness scores than the heuristic evaluation and cognitive walkthrough, suggesting that it helped evaluators identify many usability problems that actually impact users, i.e., higher thoroughness, while attenuating time and effort on issues that were not important, i.e., higher validity. Furthermore, the User-CHAT had the greatest proportion of usability problems that were rated as serious, i.e., usability issues that hinder performance and compromise safety. The User-CHAT’s performance suggests that it is an appropriate usability technique to implement into the product development lifecycle. Limitations and future research directions are discussed.

A rápida evolução tecnológica tem proporcionado que a população mundial vivencie novas formas de interação. Um fenômeno que também tem ocorrido em escala global é o envelhecimento populacional, que faz com que grande parte da população seja afetada por limitações decorrentes da idade. Jogos digitais podem oferecer diversos benefícios para um envelhecimento saudável, tais como bem-estar físico e mental, sociabilização com outros jogadores, relaxamento e entretenimento. A literatura apresenta esforços em direção a abordagens visando tornar as aplicações cada vez mais usáveis, por meio de diferentes métodos de avaliação de usabilidade. O Percurso Cognitivo (PC) é um desses métodos, que tem como finalidade a avaliação da facilidade de aprendizado. No entanto, o declínio cognitivo, especialmente quando decorrente do envelhecimento, dificulta o aprendizado pelos usuários. Assim, faz-se necessário uma investigação sobre o método PC para que considere também acessibilidade, devido a barreiras enfrentadas por pessoas idosas. O objetivo deste projeto foi propor um método de avaliação por inspeção, que considere questões de usabilidade e acessibilidade, com ênfase na facilidade de aprendizado, de modo a apoiar desenvolvedores e especialistas nas avaliações de jogos para o público idoso. Assim, foram realizados procedimentos metodológicos, tais como pesquisa bibliográfica e três Estudos de Caso (EC) para embasar o método proposto, nomeado Percurso de Barreiras Cognitivas (PBC). O primeiro EC foi realizado para analisar a aplicação do método PC, bem como identificar as possíveis vulnerabilidades do método ao avaliar jogos tendo como público alvo os idosos. Com base na primeira versão do método PBC, no segundo EC foi analisada sua aplicabilidade e foram coletadas sugestões de melhorias. A segunda versão do PBC foi então desenvolvida. No terceiro EC, foi analisada a viabilidade da aplicação da segunda versão do PBC em uma situação real. Finalmente, por incluir integralmente as questões do método PC tradicional, no PBC é esperado que um mesmo especialista ao avaliar um jogo, encontre (seja com base no PBC ou PC), no mínimo, os mesmos problemas, independente da experiência deste especialista. Foram evidenciadas que as questões e procedimentos do método PBC tendem a auxiliar / Fast technological evolution has provided the world population with new forms of interaction. A phenomenon that also occurred on a global scale is population aging, which causes a large part of the population to be affected by age-related disabilities. Digital games can offer several benefits for healthy aging including improvement of mental and physical condition of their players. Games also help users to improve personal capabilities, to become more sociable and relaxed, and to increase interaction with other users. The literature presents efforts that consider different usability evaluation methods to make applications even more usable, Cognitive Walkthrough (CW) is one of these methods. However, while CW proposes the evaluation of ease of learning, Cognitive decline, especially due aging, hinders users learning. Thus, it is necessary to extend CW, usually applied to usability domain, in order to consider issues involving accessibility. The objective of this project was to propose an inspection method for evaluating games regarding the usability and accessibility issues for the older public, with emphasis on ease of learning. Thus, methodological procedures, such as bibliographic research and three case studies (CS) were used to support the proposed method, called Cognitive Barriers Walkthrough (CBW). The first CS was performed to analyze the application of the CW method, as well to identify its possible vulnerabilities for evaluating games with the target audience as the elderly people. In the second CS, the applicability of the first version of the CBW method was analyzed and suggestions for improvements were collected, and then the second version of CBW was then developed. In the third CS, the feasibility of applying the second version of CBW was analyzed in a real situation. Finally, since the traditional CW questions were all included in CBW, it is expected that the same expert will find at least the same problems, regardless of the evaluators level of expertise. It was evidenced that the questions and procedures of the CBW method tend to help the experts to find more problems than they would find with the traditional CW method.

ABSTRACT Cloud computing has become increasingly important over the years, as the need for computational resources, data storage, and networking capabilities in the field of information technology has been increased. There are several large corporations that offer these services to small companies or to end-users such as GCP, AWS, Microsoft Azure, IBM Cloud, and many more. The main aim of this thesis is to perform the comparison of GCP and AWS consoles in terms of the user interface while performing tasks related to compute engine. The cognitive walkthrough has been performed on tasks such as the creation of VPC, creation of VM instances, and launching them and then from the results, both the interfaces are compared using usability heuristics. Background: As the usage of cloud computing has increased over the years, the companies that are offering these services have grown eventually. Though there are many cloud services available in the market the user might always choose the services that are more flexible and efficient to use. In this manner, the choice of our research is made to compare the cloud services in terms of user interaction user experience. As we dig deep into the topic of user interaction and experience there are evaluation techniques and principles such as cognitive walkthrough and usability heuristics are suitable for our research. Here the comparison is made among GCP and AWS user interfaces while performing some tasks related to compute engine. Objectives: The main objectives of this thesis are to create VPC, VM instances,s and launch VM instances in two different cloud services such as GCP and AWS. To find out the best user interface among these two cloud services from the perspective of the user. Method: The process of finding best user interface among GCP and AWS cloud services is based on the cognitive walkthrough and comparing with usability heuristics. The cognitive walkthrough is performed on chosen tasks in both the services and then compared using usability heuristics to get the results of our research. Results: The results that are obtained from cognitive walkthrough and comparison with usability heuristics shown in graphical formats such as bar graphs, pie charts, and the comparison results are shown in the form of tabular form. The results cannot be universal, as they are just observational results from cognitive walkthrough and usability heuristic evaluation. Conclusion: After performing the above-mentioned methods it is observed that the user interface of GCP is more flexible and efficient in terms of user interaction and experience. Though the user experience may vary based on the experience level of users in cloud services, as per our research the novice user and moderate users have chosen GCP as a better interactive system over AWS. Keywords: Cloud computing, VM instance, Cognitive walkthrough, Usability heuristics, User-interface.

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The Cognitive Walkthrough for the Web (CWW) is a Usability Evaluation Method that can be used as an approach to evaluate a website. Unfortunately, the original formulation of CWW has been applied by researchers in the area as a set of a semi-manual processes, which have proven to be extremely time-consuming, and as with any semi-manual process, error-prone. This thesis presents a web-based approach to automate CWW, which we call ACWW. The automation of these processes implies, on the one hand, that researchers can reduce the amount of time dedicated to computing the results associated with performing various analyses. On the other hand, it implies that the accuracy of computed results can be improved. ACWW is available from http://autocww.colorado.edu/~brownr/. Finally, ACWW has been mentioned in a paper by Dr. Marilyn Blackmon, a leader in usability research, at the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) in April of 2005 [Blackmon05].