<p>First-year students at Linköping University have developed a prototype that graphically visualizes a medical record in a new way. The customer of that project was the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Linköping University. They now want a usability evaluation to be performed of the prototype. The prototype is to be used by employees in the public health care and is supposed to be used on a small portable unit with a multi-touch interface. For this reason the prototype will be used as a complement to existing systems when the users work near the patients. Since the prototype is still in the design phase it is important that the continuing development is carried out in close collaboration with the users.</p><p>The purpose of this thesis was to point out which usability problems the prototype violates and which needs it must satisfy. The purpose was also to examine how the users interact with an iPod touch and what they consider of using an iPod touch. Usability is created when human interacts with a product to achieve specified goals, where the product is easy to learn, effective to use, easy to remember, has few errors and is satisfactory to use. By early and continuously involving the users in its development a product is able to reach a high level of usability. In this thesis a number of well known usability methods were used, e.g. interviews, heuristic evaluation and thinking aloud protocol. All these methods are described thoroughly in this report among with a review of how they were implemented. Finally, these methods are being discussed together with the obtained results.</p><p>During the interviews with the users a number of usability problems in the prototype were discovered together with the users’ needs which it must satisfy. It was also discovered that most of the users thought positive of working with an iPod touch. In the continuing development of the prototype these usability problems should be fixed in order to satisfy the users’ needs.</p> / <p>Förstaårsstudenter vid Linköpings Universitet har utvecklat en prototyp som på ett nytt sätt visualiserar en patientjournal grafiskt. Beställare av projektet var Institutionen för medicinsk teknik vid Linköpings Universitet som nu vill att en användbarhetsutvärdering genomförs av prototypen. Prototypen riktar sig till anställda inom sjukvården och ska användas på en liten handhållen enhet med pekskärm. Av denna anledning ska den vara ett komplement till befintliga system när användarna arbetar nära patienterna. Då den ännu befinner sig tidigt i utvecklingsstadiet är det nödvändigt att fortsatt utveckling sker i nära kontakt med användarna.</p><p>Detta examensarbete syftade till att peka på vilka användbarhetsprinciper prototypen bryter mot, vilka behov den måste tillgodose, att undersöka hur användarna interagerar med en Ipod touch och vad de anser om att arbeta med en sådan enhet. Användbarhet uppstår när människan interagerar med en produkt för att lösa givna uppgifter, där produkten är lätt att lära, effektiv att använda, har få fel, är subjektivt tilltalande och där det är lätt att komma ihåg hur den används. Genom att tidigt och kontinuerligt involvera användarna i utvecklingsarbetet uppnås god användbarhet. I detta arbete tillämpades ett flertal kända användbarhetsmetoder, bl.a. intervjuer, heuristisk utvärdering och tänka högt. Alla metoder finns beskrivna teoretiskt i rapporten tillsammans med en redogörelse för hur de tillämpades. Slutligen följer en diskussion kring dem och det resultat som erhölls.</p><p>Under intervjuerna med användarna framkom flera användbarhetsproblem i prototypen samt de behov den måste tillgodose. Arbetet kom även fram till att användarna över lag ställer sig positiva till att arbeta med en Ipod touch. I den fortsatta vidareutvecklingen av prototypen bör dessa användbarhetsproblem åtgärdas för att prototypen ska tillgodose användarnas behov.</p>

First-year students at Linköping University have developed a prototype that graphically visualizes a medical record in a new way. The customer of that project was the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Linköping University. They now want a usability evaluation to be performed of the prototype. The prototype is to be used by employees in the public health care and is supposed to be used on a small portable unit with a multi-touch interface. For this reason the prototype will be used as a complement to existing systems when the users work near the patients. Since the prototype is still in the design phase it is important that the continuing development is carried out in close collaboration with the users. The purpose of this thesis was to point out which usability problems the prototype violates and which needs it must satisfy. The purpose was also to examine how the users interact with an iPod touch and what they consider of using an iPod touch. Usability is created when human interacts with a product to achieve specified goals, where the product is easy to learn, effective to use, easy to remember, has few errors and is satisfactory to use. By early and continuously involving the users in its development a product is able to reach a high level of usability. In this thesis a number of well known usability methods were used, e.g. interviews, heuristic evaluation and thinking aloud protocol. All these methods are described thoroughly in this report among with a review of how they were implemented. Finally, these methods are being discussed together with the obtained results. During the interviews with the users a number of usability problems in the prototype were discovered together with the users’ needs which it must satisfy. It was also discovered that most of the users thought positive of working with an iPod touch. In the continuing development of the prototype these usability problems should be fixed in order to satisfy the users’ needs. / Förstaårsstudenter vid Linköpings Universitet har utvecklat en prototyp som på ett nytt sätt visualiserar en patientjournal grafiskt. Beställare av projektet var Institutionen för medicinsk teknik vid Linköpings Universitet som nu vill att en användbarhetsutvärdering genomförs av prototypen. Prototypen riktar sig till anställda inom sjukvården och ska användas på en liten handhållen enhet med pekskärm. Av denna anledning ska den vara ett komplement till befintliga system när användarna arbetar nära patienterna. Då den ännu befinner sig tidigt i utvecklingsstadiet är det nödvändigt att fortsatt utveckling sker i nära kontakt med användarna. Detta examensarbete syftade till att peka på vilka användbarhetsprinciper prototypen bryter mot, vilka behov den måste tillgodose, att undersöka hur användarna interagerar med en Ipod touch och vad de anser om att arbeta med en sådan enhet. Användbarhet uppstår när människan interagerar med en produkt för att lösa givna uppgifter, där produkten är lätt att lära, effektiv att använda, har få fel, är subjektivt tilltalande och där det är lätt att komma ihåg hur den används. Genom att tidigt och kontinuerligt involvera användarna i utvecklingsarbetet uppnås god användbarhet. I detta arbete tillämpades ett flertal kända användbarhetsmetoder, bl.a. intervjuer, heuristisk utvärdering och tänka högt. Alla metoder finns beskrivna teoretiskt i rapporten tillsammans med en redogörelse för hur de tillämpades. Slutligen följer en diskussion kring dem och det resultat som erhölls. Under intervjuerna med användarna framkom flera användbarhetsproblem i prototypen samt de behov den måste tillgodose. Arbetet kom även fram till att användarna över lag ställer sig positiva till att arbeta med en Ipod touch. I den fortsatta vidareutvecklingen av prototypen bör dessa användbarhetsproblem åtgärdas för att prototypen ska tillgodose användarnas behov.

This paper describes a usability study of a responsive website prototype. A heuristic evaluation was conducted with three evaluators with a background in HCI, and user tests with four potential users were conducted as a control method to test the relevance of the heuristic evaluation result. The study showed that the website prototype failed the visibility of system status, user control and freedom and error prevention heuristics in the heuristic evaluation. However, the users responses contradict that result by showing that the users had no problems with those areas in the user tests. In fact, the users detected no usability problems at all. This could mean that those heuristics are not relevant for a responsive Web 2.0 site and needs to be removed when conducting a heuristic evaluation of a responsive website in the future, and that designing for responsiveness leads to higher usability. This study shows some indications but more testing needs to be done, preferably on several fully developed responsive websites, to be able to make any real conclusions about the usability of a responsive website and the relevance of the heuristics used in this study.

Within system development users have rarely been involved or received much attention during the development. Most of the times, the primary focus within system development lies on insuring functionality, rather than making the system usable. The literature specifies that a non user-centered approach can contribute to a product with low usability, which can lead to an ineffective and unsatisfactory experience for the end users. The purpose of this thesis is to begin an investigation to see if the use of non user-oriented system development methods is a possible cause of low usability in the final system. To achieve the purpose of this thesis, we have conducted a case study. Within the case study we examined the usability of a time reporting system. The case study included seven minor studies; an investigation concerning the development of the system, an expert evaluation of the system, interviews and observations of users, developed paper prototypes and executable prototypes, both which user testing was performed on. The result of this study shows that by working with user-entered methods, the usability in the time reporting system increased after the design had been revised. This study is therefore another example of that systems developed with user-centered system development methods have higher usability than systems developed not user-centered. / Inom systemutveckling har användare sällan varit involverade eller fått större uppmärksamhet under utvecklingsarbetet. Fokus ligger ofta på att systemet ska ha en viss funktionalitet snarare än att det ska vara användbart. I litteraturen anges att brist på användarcentrering kan bidra till en produkt med låg användbarhet, vilket kan innebära en ineffektiv och otillfredsställande upplevelse för slutanvändarna. Syftet med denna uppsats är att påbörja en undersökning för att se om användandet av icke användarcentrerade systemutvecklingsmetoder är en möjlig orsak till låg användbarhet hos det färdiga systemet. För att uppnå syftet med denna uppsats har vi utfört en fallstudie. Denna fallstudie innebar att undersöka användbarheten i ett tidrapporteringssystem. Fallstudien innehöll sju delstudier; en undersökning av hur utvecklingen av systemet gick till, en expertutvärdering av systemet, intervjuer och observationer av användare, framarbetade pappersprototyper och en framarbetad klickbar prototyp vilka bägge det utfördes användartester på. Resultatet av denna studie visar att användbarheten i tidrapporteringssystemet ökade efter att designen blivit omarbetad med hjälp av användarcentrerade metoder. Denna studie är därför ännu ett exempel på att system utvecklade med användarcentrerade systemutveckling-smetoder har högre användbarhet än system utvecklade icke användarcentrerat.

The main goal of this study was to do a heuristic evaluation of the information architecture (IA) of the recently redesigned academic library website of the University of Pretoria and to provide recommendations for improvement if necessary. The main problem that is addressed by this study is that there is no comprehensive list of heuristics for the purpose of evaluating the IA of academic library websites. This study used various methods to address this problem and achieve the main goal. A literature review resulted in a set of integrated usability heuristics that can be used to do a heuristic evaluation of the IA of academic library websites. The set was created based on an integration of existing usability principles from authorities in the field of usability. The integrated set of existing principles was made applicable to academic library websites through the addition of sub-criteria based on a review of twenty related studies. A multiple-case study method was used for the heuristic evaluation of the library websites of the top three universities in South Africa, i.e., University of Cape Town, University of the Witwatersrand, and Stellenbosch University. The results of the multiple-case study method were used to further adapt the list of principles. The heuristic evaluation method was used in each of the case studies as a data collection method. Another case study was done, using the same method and revised heuristics, to evaluate the usability of the library website of the University of Pretoria and to provide recommendations. The main outcomes of this study is a list of heuristics that can be used for the heuristic evaluation of the IA of academic library websites, as well as a list of recommendations for the improvement of the newly redesigned library website of the University of Pretoria. The list of heuristics is not limited to academic library websites, however, as it can be adapted and reused for the heuristic evaluation of other types of websites. / Dissertation (MIS)--University of Pretoria, 2017. / Information Science / MIS / Unrestricted

There  are  currently  multiple  usability  evaluation methods  in  use. Some  of  them  involve  users  whereas  others  do  not.  It  is commonly assumed that the usability problems found via user-involved methods are real problems that the end-users may face when using the product in real situations. In this study, one usability evaluation method that does not involve  users,  Heuristic  Evaluation,  was  evaluated  by  comparing the results  it  provided to the results provided by a user-involved method, Think Aloud. Heuristic Evaluation’s performance in detecting usability problems of a system was evaluated in two cases: taking all of the usability problems of the interface into account and only taking the serious usability problems of the interface into account. A system called Nytt, provided by Nytt Ab, was used as the evaluated system. The values of thoroughness, validity and effectiveness were calculated based on the numbers of actual usability problems found via Heuristic Evaluation, actual problems missed by Heuristic Evaluation and false problems found via Heuristic Evaluation. The findings of this study suggest that Heuristic Evaluation does not detect all of the problems that Think Aloud does but instead offers a lot of other findings as problems. Moreover, the performance of Heuristic Evaluation is not drastically affected by  whether detecting only serious usability problems or usability problems in general.

Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) has become a leading cause of death in Sweden, while the useful tool external defibrillator (AED), which enables the heart to restart to beat, is not fully used. Prior studies have worked out various solutions to promote the use of AEDs. However, those studies only delved into the situation in certain areas but barely fit the conditions in Sweden. In addition, few of the studies explored the cause of low use of AEDs from the perspective of users. This work investigated the drawbacks in the current situation in Sweden and users’ thoughts towards using AEDs. As a result, this thesis presented a persuasive design, a group of embedded functions in Google Maps. The main effects of the design are: 1. Endowing bystanders with knowledge of where AEDs are located and how to manage the device 2. Facilitating the process of seeking and retrieving the devices and creating a channel for bystanders to sought help. The prototype was further evaluated through Heuristic Evaluation. The study results showed the design successfully made a persuasive impact on bystanders to change their attitudes by offering instruction for them to seek and control AEDs. The design also remedied deficiencies in the current situation of using AEDs in Sweden. Lastly, the study concluded persuasive design can play a role to facilitate the use of AEDs, thus improving the survival rate of OHCAs.

This paper can be seen as a first step towards developing genre tailored heuristics for visual novels. The focus being visual novels come from the fact that it is a genre of games that is growing in popularity globally. Besides players and developers, it is also popular among researchers because the genre is very accessible (Camingue, Carstensdottir &amp; Melcer 2021). But let’s say the developers and researchers want to evaluate a visual novel they are creating, what methods would be fitting. There isn’t a lot of research on this, so the method suggested in this paper is heuristic evaluation, due to it being a very accessible method (Nielsen 1994). To tailor heuristics for this genre, a compiled list of heuristics was used to evaluate a number of visual novels and the data from the evaluation was analyzed and used to identify problems that weren’t addressed by the heuristics.

During the past decades, a substantial amount of research efforts have been made regarding making the web and digital content more accessible. However, research states that the current accessibility state globally is yet not sufficient, resulting in excluding a large group of people due to disabilities. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the current accessibility state of the prototype version of Ubisoft Connect’s chat application and how to make accessibility a natural part of a team's existing agile processes. This is performed by gathering knowledge about a team's current working processes by conducting two qualitative interviews, along with a nine-week observation, allowing us to partake in their processes when implementing changes. To evaluate the chat's current accessibility state, two of the most used usability evaluation techniques are used: heuristic evaluation and user testing. The heuristic evaluation is based on the internationally recognized standard: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1. The findings from the heuristic evaluation are implemented by the Ubisoft Connect team in the chat prototype and are later tested by 4 testers with disabilities. The result of this case study shows that heuristic evaluation and user testing should be used to complement each other since one method alone cannot create a valid accessibility state. Furthermore, it shows that agile management is the preferred method when making these changes.

There is scarce research that implement a formal framework when evaluating usability evaluation methods such as heuristicevaluation. This paper aimed to explore and compare the results of a heuristic evaluation performed by end-users and a heuristicevaluation performed by experts. Both heuristic evaluations took place in the context of forestry industry where a mobileapplication developed to give harvest operators performance feedback was evaluated. A thorough literature review for researchregarding evaluation of UEM was a crucial first step. The outcome of this produced an evaluation framework that included threecriteria, Relevance, Frequency and Timeliness. These criteria were used to analyse the results from the heuristics evaluationsperformed by the two groups, using mixed methods. The quantitative analysis concluded that the evaluation performed by theend-users had a higher frequency and relevance value, and that the evaluation performed by the expert group had higher valuefor their solution rate in the timeliness criteria. Furthermore, the qualitative analysis held within the criteria timeliness concludedthat the two groups identified different types of usability problems, confirming previous research performed on different types ofheuristic evaluators.