<p>As an increasing number of people are logging on to the internet to do their shopping, it is imperative for a site to be accessible and usable. Nielsen’s heuristic method is one esteemed method that many web site developers use in their design work. One study suggests that online shopping needs most improvement with the heuristics “User control and freedom” where an undo button often is lacking and in ‘Help and Documentation’ where the user may not easily switch between their work and the help. The study, however, has been made on grocery shops alone.</p><p>The following study adopts the results of the past study as hypotheses and investigates if they hold true for another type of online shopping site – women’s apparel. The results of the study confirm that these two heuristics indeed are the two most troublesome. However, for the biggest usability disaster under each, the results are either inapplicable or only lend weak support. The following results lend more support to a possible generalization for all online sites and better awareness among software developers of online shopping sites. Yet a more consistent base of common usability disasters under these two specific heuristics needs to be developed.</p>

There are a several methods to evaluate usability of systems with graphical user interfaces (GUIS). However, effective methods for evaluating non-GUI interaction devices in the domain of Interactive Television are presently not available. This thesis presents a modified Heuristic Evaluation method for rapid inspection of non-GUI TV-interaction devices such as remote controls. Additionally, to enable the evaluators to more easily think from a user perspective when performing the evaluation, the persona method was also evaluated for use in this domain. The modified Heuristic Evaluation method was evaluated in an actual development project where engineers applied the method on remote control prototypes. The result suggests that the method can be used effectively by engineers and that it identifies usability problems appropriately. The persona approach seemed to provide little support to the engineers in terms of evaluating this type product.

The number of Institutional Repositories (IRs), such as DalSpace, has been growing in the past few years. However, most IRs are not widely used by the intended end users. Evaluating the user interfaces is an essential part of any process to increase users' acceptance of IRs. There are two foci of this thesis: to evaluate the usability of DalSpace's interface using Nielsen's heuristics to uncover usability problems for development purposes and to examine the differences between user-interface experts and non-experts in uncovering problems with the interface. To apply the heuristics to the interface, I formed user profiles (also known as personas) to represent potential end-users groups. These profiles helped to communicate users' needs, abilities, tasks, and problems. To produce a reliable list of usability problems by applying the heuristic evaluation approach, I examined the impact of expertise on the quality of the results. From the individual heuristic analyses (by both experts and novices), I distilled 66 usability problems classified by severity. Also, the frequency of each violated heuristic was used to assign priority to the uncovered usability problems as well as the severity level. The results of applying the heuristic evaluation show that both experts and non-experts can uncover usability problems. In fact, the ability to find difficult and easy problems was recorded for both types of evaluators. However, experts tend to reveal more serious problems, while novices uncover less severe problems. Interestingly, the best evaluator (who found 21% of the total number of problems) was a novice. Our results indicate that we cannot rely on one evaluator even if the evaluator is an expert. The administrative interface is out of the scope of the thesis; however, the usability of the interface should be examined for improvement purposes. More user profiles should be formed to represent additional user groups for more interfaces including the end user and staff's interfaces. Both results from the user profiles and the list of usability problems will be given as tools to the development team for improvement.

As an increasing number of people are logging on to the internet to do their shopping, it is imperative for a site to be accessible and usable. Nielsen’s heuristic method is one esteemed method that many web site developers use in their design work. One study suggests that online shopping needs most improvement with the heuristics “User control and freedom” where an undo button often is lacking and in ‘Help and Documentation’ where the user may not easily switch between their work and the help. The study, however, has been made on grocery shops alone. The following study adopts the results of the past study as hypotheses and investigates if they hold true for another type of online shopping site – women’s apparel. The results of the study confirm that these two heuristics indeed are the two most troublesome. However, for the biggest usability disaster under each, the results are either inapplicable or only lend weak support. The following results lend more support to a possible generalization for all online sites and better awareness among software developers of online shopping sites. Yet a more consistent base of common usability disasters under these two specific heuristics needs to be developed.

Today, web, Internet, mobile and other ambient technologies engage in persuasive interaction with people. The technology designed to reinforce and change user’s attitude or behaviors or both through persuasion and social influence are persuasive technologies. Recently, persuasive systems and services are becoming increasingly abundant and ubiquitous. Evaluation of these systems is a challenging endeavor and typically requires a simple and efficient method. Nielsen suggests heuristic evaluation as a method for intuitive, inexpensive and easy evaluation of a user interface design. The purpose of this thesis is to examine heuristic evaluation as a method to evaluate the persuasive potential of software programs. The Heuristics used were operationalized version of Fogg’s persuasive design principles. Software programs MS Word, MS PowerPoint, Counter-Strike, The Sims, Stone and Plan Eat Smile were chosen with the goal of measuring their ability to change behavior or attitude of users. The Evaluation was performed on the software programs using three evaluators and the test results indicated that they possess significant persuasive potential. It was concluded that the set of heuristics which were developed can be used to perform summative heuristic evaluation and the method used was helpful in evaluating the persuasive potential of software programs.

Developing economical yet effective methods of incorporating usability engineering as an integral part of software engineering is a primary focus of human-computer interaction (HCI) research. However, much HCI research has focused primarily on inspecting and evaluating applications supporting command-line or graphical user interface (GUI) interaction styles. With the dramatic increase in virtual environment (VE) research in recent years, the HCI community is beginning to place an added emphasis on creating methodologies to ensure usability in VE development. While the demand for VE-specific usability engineering methods and criteria is dire as the amount of money invested by military, government, commercial, and industrial organizations continues to grow, widely accepted methodologies for assessing VE usability are, at this point in time, minimal. There has been a recent increase in research discussing the need of VE-specific usability engineering methodologies, but few research projects have concentrated their efforts on providing such methodologies. Therefore, application developers attempting to apply a user-centered design approach in constructing VEs must often perform largely ad-hoc assessments or in-house evaluations using existing non-VE-specific usability engineering methodologies. The primary focus of this research was to develop a method to guide usability engineering of VEs. The strategy used to develop this usability evaluation method was to modify existing usability evaluation methodologies to support VE development by leveraging the results of previous VE usability research performed at Virginia Tech and elsewhere. The result was a VE-specific usability evaluation methodology that encompasses two existing usability assessment techniques: usability inspections and formative evaluations. We applied this methodology to Crumbs, an immersive visualization VE developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). A multi-dimensional framework of VE usability characteristics was a topic of research at Virginia Tech. This framework provided the backbone for VE-specific modifications to the existing usability evaluation techniques proposed in this research. Framework design guidelines permitted usability specialists to perform guidelines-based usability inspections of Crumbs. Results gathered from the guidelines-based usability inspections were used not only to redesign the Crumbs user interface but also drive creation of a formative evaluation plan. Application of the methodology not only uncovered usability issues with Crumbs, but also provided invaluable information regarding the effectiveness of the methodology itself. We conclude this thesis by describing a usability evaluation methodology, called the Modified Concept Book Usability Evaluation Methodology, proposed to improve the usability evaluation methodology performed on Crumbs and other VEs. Our methodology was adapted from an established methodology for performing content analysis on a large volume of qualitative data. Because the realm of VEs is so vast and diverse in application domains and devices, we do not claim that our methodology supports an exhaustive usability evaluation of all VEs. However, the proposed technique is a first attempt at modifying existing usability evaluation methods, and therefore can be used as a launching pad for methodologies to evaluate other aspects of specific VE applications. / Master of Science

This study investigates the refinement of an evaluation framework for e-Government websites. The aim of the research was to determine how an existing evaluation framework, which recommends the use of multiple usability techniques, could be used to obtain usability data that would indicate how to improve e-Government websites and satisfy users' needs. The framework describes how common techniques, such as heuristic testing and user testing, can be used with the emerging discipline of web analytics to provide a comprehensive and detailed view of users' interactions on e-Government websites. The original framework was refined in the light of the findings and the refined framework should facilitate the improvement of e-Government websites depending on users' demands and interactions. The work involved implementing the original multi-dimensional framework in e-Government websites in Saudi Arabia. A case study method was used over two implementations. In the former implementation, the evaluation methods consisted of heuristic evaluation followed by usability testing then web analytic tools. However, in the later implementation, refinements to the evaluation framework were proposed and the order of methods was amended: web analytics was used first, followed by heuristic evaluation then usability testing. The framework recommends specific usability methods for evaluating specific issues. The conclusions of this study illustrate the potential benefits of using a multidimensional evaluation framework for e-Government websites and it was found that each usability method had its own particular benefits and limitations. The research concludes by illustrating the potential usefulness of the designed evaluation framework in raising awareness of usability methods for evaluating e-Government websites in Saudi Arabia.

The importance of evaluating the usability of e-commerce websites is well recognised and this area has attracted research attention for more than a decade. Nearly all the studies that evaluated the usability of e-commerce websites employed either user-based (i.e. user testing) or evaluator-based (i.e. heuristic evaluation) usability evaluation methods; but no research has employed softwarebased (i.e. Google Analytics software) in the evaluation of such sites. Furthermore, the studies which employed user testing and/or heuristic evaluation methods in the evaluation of the usability of e-commerce websites did not offer detail about the benefits and drawbacks of these methods with respect to the identification of specific types of usability problems. This research developed a methodological framework for the usability evaluation of e-commerce websites which involved user testing and heuristic evaluation methods together with Google Analytics software. The framework was developed by comparing the benefits and drawbacks of these methods in terms of the specific areas of usability problems that they could or could not identify on ecommerce websites. The framework involves Google Analytics software as a preliminary step to provide a quick, easy and cheap indication of general potential usability problem areas on an e-commerce website and its specific pages. Then, the framework enables evaluators to choose other methods to provide in-depth detail about specific iv problems on the site. For instance, the framework suggests that user testing is good for identifying specific major usability problems related to four areas: navigation, design, the purchasing process and accessibility and customer service, while the heuristic evaluation is good for identifying a large number of specific minor usability problems related to eight areas including: navigation, internal search, the site architecture, the content, the design, accessibility and customer service, inconsistency and missing capabilities. The framework also suggests that the heuristic evaluation is good at identifying major security and privacy problems. The framework was developed based on an extensive evaluation of the effectiveness of the three methods in identifying specific usability problems in three case studies (e-commerce websites) in Jordan. This highlighted the usefulness of the methods and therefore helps e-commerce retailers to determine the usability method that best matches their needs. The framework was tested and the results indicated the usefulness of the suggested framework in raising awareness of usability and usability evaluation methods among e-commerce retailers in Jordan. This will help them address usability in the design of their websites, thus helping them to survive, grow and achieve success.

Student Number : 9804058J - MSc dissertation - School of Information and Electrical Engineering - Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment / This paper presents the implementation of usability engineering into a device to meet the requirements of a Visually Impaired Person (VIP). Users of such a device may suffer from conditions such as Macular Degeneration, Diabetes and HIV/AID’s related disorders. Since these disorders affect a person’s vision, the device enlarges the desired text to reduce the effects of loss of vision. Other functionality may include image manipulation and colour modification. A usability engineering framework is incorporated into the design as well as accommodating user requirements in the design process. Usability principles are implemented, hence meeting the aims of effectiveness, efficiency, learnability, satisfaction and context of use. The device is examined via heuristic evaluation and usability testing from specialists and end users, with comments, ratings and times recorded. Research indicates that this device successfully implements usability engineering techniques and provides a cost effective, highly functional device for the VIP.

Computer security visualization has gained much attention in the research community in the past few years. However, the advancement in security visualization research has been hampered by the lack of standardization in visualization design, centralized datasets, and evaluation methods. We propose a new heuristic model for evaluating the complexity of computer security visualizations. This complexity evaluation method is designed to evaluate the efficiency of performing visual search in security visualizations in terms of measuring critical memory capacity load needed to perform such tasks. Our method is based on research in cognitive psychology along with characteristics found in a majority of the security visualizations. The main goal for developing this complexity evaluation method is to guide computer security visualization design and compare different visualization designs. Finally, we compare several well known computer security visualization systems. The proposed method has the potential to be extended to other areas of information visualization.