This work explores the utilization of scenarios in an iterative usability engineering process for the development of a next-generation multilocus sequence typing (MLST) tool. The following three research question were investigated during the usability process: (1) what are the differences in the elicited requirements as scenarios move further from extant work practices, (2) what are the differences in the elicited requirements between structured and free-form scenario groups, and (3) are participant-developed scenarios from the scenario-based interviews effective for use as tasks in formative usability evaluation. Scenario-based interviews were conducted to collect relevant work-practice information and domain knowledge from two user classes. Requirements distilled from the scenarios and complementary interview questions informed the design of multiple iterations of the tool. A formative usability evaluation was conducted on the second iteration of the tool with the same participants. Resulting requirements from the scenario-based interviews suggest that proposing scenarios beyond current work practices overwhelmed and confused participants, and therefore worked against requirements generation. Conversely, a less structured scenario-based interview scheme yielded a greater quantity of requirements, and specifically produced more creative requirements. Participant-developed scenarios from the scenario-based interviews were ultimately useful as benchmark tasks in the formative usability evaluation because they were intricate enough to afford meaningful interaction with the interface, while still being completable by both user classes. This research helps to provide a greater understanding of the utilization of novel scenario styles and methodologies, thereby providing support for the continued investigation into scenario use for a variety of applications. / Master of Science

This research examines the healthcare services ecosystem and the impact and role service interventions made by providers and patients have on this ecosystem. Each area has an important role in contributing to the value and sustainability of the ecosystem. Healthcare, as a community service, requires a minimum of two counterparts: the providers and the customers, in this case the patients. Healthcare is a unique ecosystem because often the customers are not conscious of the interplay of the ecosystem but are reliant upon the system for their health and wellbeing. The first section of this dissertation examines the effects that occur in the healthcare ecosystem when part of the system experiences a disaster and the impact and role of other areas of the system in response to the disaster, particularly regarding the resilience. Similar to a biological ecosystem that is undergoing a flood, in the healthcare services ecosystem if too many patients present to the Emergency Department (ED) at the same time disaster level overcrowding will occur. We aim to measure the resilience of the healthcare ecosystem to this disaster level overcrowding. The second section of this dissertation examines how the components of the healthcare ecosystem maintain sustainability and usability. Healthcare professionals are assessed regarding their ability to maintain the healthcare ecosystem, with a specific focus on what occurs after patients are in the hospital system. To examine the ability of the healthcare professionals to maintain the ecosystem we analyze the usability and adaptability of the electronic health record and the professional's workflows to determine how they use this tool to sustain the healthcare ecosystem. The third section of this dissertation examines patient self-management and the influence this has on the healthcare ecosystem. Much of the management of health in patients, particularly those with chronic illnesses, occurs outside of the hospital, thus examining this aspect of self-care provides insight on the overall system. This research examines patients with a chronic illness and their use of online health communities, with a particular focus on their reciprocal behaviors and the impact this support system has on their overall health state. By examining these aspects of the healthcare services ecosystem, we can better improve our understanding of these phenomena. / Ph. D.

In the electric utility industry, displays provide power system operators with information on and the status of the system, who then make decisions on how to maintain the safety, the reliability and the efficient operation of the utility generation and transmission grid based on that information. Complexity of the data presented and the display itself can lead to errors or misjudgments that can cause power system operators to make unwise decisions. The primary goal of this research was to develop a method to quantify display complexity for select displays used by system operators when operating the electric generation and transmission grids. Three studies were performed: (1) complexity measure development, (2) validation of the measure using usability and situation awareness (SA) techniques, and (3) display revisions based on complexity measure findings. Fifteen 15 different complexity metrics were originally considered (additive models, multiplicative models, and combination models with five different weighting schemes). The additive model with equal weighting was found to be the most sensitive in differentiating displays and was used in the later studies. For the validation study, system operators were asked to complete a usability questionnaire and a paper-based SA test using the current displays. Correlation and scatter plot analyses was used to determine if the complexity metric and usability and SA scores were related. Results of the validation study indicated that usability and SA scores for the studied displays were not well correlated with the complexity metric. In study 3, the highest and lowest scoring displays were redesigned with an emphasis on maintaining functionality but reducing aspects of complexity that were driving the complexity score. Systems operators again completed the usability and SA testing using the redesigned displays and again correlation analysis was performed. As was the case with study 2, usability scores were not correlated with the complexity metric; however, SA scores were significantly correlated. The complexity metric developed here can be used to quantify the complexity in a display and identify redesign opportunities to reduce non-essential information, as displays that are less complex should result in improved operator performance and satisfaction with the display.

Die vorliegende Bachelorarbeit befasst sich mit der Untersuchung der Usability der Betaversion des neuen Onlinekatalogs der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek anhand von Usability-Tests. Das Ziel der Arbeit besteht darin, die Benutzungsfreundlichkeit des Katalogs zu evaluieren und mögliche Verbesserungspotenziale aufzuzeigen, um den Benutzenden eine optimale Suche durch intuitive Recherchemöglichkeiten wie Filter zu ermöglichen. Die Untersuchung beschränkt sich auf die Recherche in der Betaversion. Der theoretische Teil der Arbeit umfasst eine detaillierte Beschreibung der grundlegenden Konzepte und Methoden im Bereich der Usability-Untersuchungen. Im praktischen Teil werden Usability-Tests durchgeführt, bei denen Probanden verschiedene Aufgaben im Onlinekatalog ausführen. Die Ergebnisse des Tests werden in Bezug auf Usability-Probleme und Verbesserungspotenziale hinsichtlich der Recherchewege ausgewertet. Es werden konkrete Lösungsvorschläge entwickelt, um die Benutzungserfahrung im Onlinekatalog der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek zu optimieren. Die vorliegende Arbeit soll dazu beitragen, die Usability des neuen Onlinekatalogs zu verbessern und den Benutzenden ein effizientes und angenehmes Sucherlebnis zu bieten.:1 Einleitung 1.1 Ziel und Aufgabe der Bachelorarbeit 1.2 Überblick über den Aufbau der Arbeit 2 Usability 2.1 Definition von Usability 2.2 Bedeutung der Usability für OPACs von Bibliotheken 2.3 Deutsche Nationalbibliothek 2.4 Methoden der Usability-Evaluation 2.4.1 DIN EN ISO 9241-110 2.4.2 Expertenbewertung 2.4.3 Eye-Tracking 2.4.4 A/B-Tests 2.4.5 Interviews 2.4.6 Usability-Tests 2.4.7 Fazit 3 Umsetzung der Evaluationsmethode zur Bewertung der Usability 3.1 Auswahl der Teilnehmenden 3.2 Fragebogen 3.3 Pretest 3.4 Durchführung der Evaluation 4 Ergebnisse der Usability-Evaluation 5 Fazit und Empfehlungen 6 Literaturverzeichnis 7 Anhang 7.1 Untersuchungsdesign 7.2 Fragebogen 7.3 Fragebögen der Teilnehmenden 7.4 Gesprächsnotiz des Gruppengesprächs mit den Teilnehmenden 7.5 Tabelle Auswertung 8 Selbstständigkeitserklärung

The usability of an application often plays an important role in determining its success. Accordingly, organizations that develop software have realized the need to integrate usability engineering into their development lifecycles. Although usability practitioners have successfully applied usability engineering processes to increase the usability of user-interaction designs, the literature suggests that usability practitioners experience a number of difficulties that negatively impact their effectiveness. These difficulties include identifying and recording critical usability data, understanding and relating usability data, and communicating usability information. These difficulties are particularly pronounced for novice usability practitioners. With this dissertation, I explored approaches to address these difficulties through tool support for novice usability practitioners. Through an analysis of features provided by existing tools with respect to documented difficulties, I determined a set of desirable tool features including usability problem instance records, usability problem diagnosis, and a structured process for combining and associating usability problem data. I developed a usability engineering tool, the Data Collection, Analysis, and Reporting Tool (DCART), which contains these desirable tool features, and used it as a platform for studies of how these desirable features address the documented difficulties. The results of the studies suggest that appropriate tool support can improve the effectiveness with which novice usability practitioners perform usability evaluations. More specifically, tool support for usability problem instance records helped novice usability practitioners more reliably identify and better describe instances of usability problems experienced by participants. Additionally, tool support for a structured process for combining and associating usability data helped novice usability practitioners create usability evaluation reports that were of higher quality as rated by usability practitioners and developers. The results highlight key contributions of this dissertation, showing how tools can support usability practitioners. They demonstrate the value of a structured process for transforming raw usability data into usability information based on usability problem instances. Additionally, they show that appropriate tool support is a mechanism for further integrating usability engineering into the overall software development lifecycle; tool support addresses the documented need for more usability practitioners by helping novices perform more like experts. / Ph. D.

The Internet is gradually expanding to many new devices, in addition to its original native environment that was the Personal Computer. This wave started with mobile devices and as we enter the Internet of Things era, connectivity is possible from cars to light switches. One of the first devices, to follow mobiles, is the Television. Connectivity and two-way interaction on the TV device has in fact started even in the first days of the medium, but had failed to make it widely available, due to technological limitations of the past. Now, this has changed, with the Smart TV devices that can utilize the fast internet connections that are available in most developed countries. However, even though the technology and devices are now widely available there are still challenges in order to make the vast Internet and web content available in the Smart TVs. These challenges, have a familiar resemblance to what happened a few years ago, when internet connectivity was introduced on the mobile phone. Although, it was "feasible" to access any webpage from your mobile device, the experience for the user was often very frustrating, due to many factors, that derived from the fact that the web was designed for large screens and mice of the desktop computers, not the small touch screens and limited hardware of the phone. Nonetheless, these obstacles were successfully overcome, by introducing techniques and methodologies (e.g. Responsive Web Design) to make the web more mobile-friendly and also work from the manufacturers to improve their devices to this direction as well. The success of these actions is now evident, since the access to the web from mobile devices has surpassed the PC, and it is now a standard practice for every new website to be mobile-friendly. In this research work, we will attempt to do one very significant step towards this direction for the Smart TV. In other words, to discover what has to be done to make the web more TV-friendly. To do this, we explore many different TV devices from several manufacturers and see their similarities and differences. We explore numerous user studies and surveys to discover what is the problem in the Web experience on the TV, so that we can propose solutions to make web content TV-friendly. Based on these findings, we design prototypes and put them to the test on different devices and userevaluation. Finally, we propose a set of guidelines, that web designers can apply on their websites to make them TV-friendly, in the hope to introduce the first step towards a friendlier internet era for the TV.

Usability is one of the important quality attributes. Open source software products are well known for their efficiency and effectiveness. Lack of usability in OSS (Open Source Software) products will result in poor usage of the product. In OSS development there is no usability team, and one could therefore expect that the usability would be low for these products. In order to find out if this was really the case we made a usability evaluation using a questionnaire for four OSS products. The questionnaire was based on a review of existing literature. This questionnaire was presented to 17 people who are working with open source products. This evaluation showed that the overall usability was above average for all the four products. It seems, however, that the lack of a usability team has made the OSS products less easy to use for inexperienced users. Based on the responses to questionnaire and a literature review, a set of guidelines and hints for increasing the usability of OSS products was defined.

This research evaluated mental schema accuracy, user experience, and training methods of computer based tasks using educational software. Aims were to investigate the impact of mental schemas on individuals’ usability of technology and analyze the impact of training and user experience in terms of mental schemas and performance. Study one investigated schema accuracy as a predictor of perceived usability and mental workload; by analyzing the accuracy of users’ mental schema through task correctness. Task was found to be a significant predictor of the measures of usability, along with various demographic variables. When considering the effect of tasks, schema accuracy was a significant predictor of perceived usability and mental workload for task two (online quiz). Perceived usability showed lower values indicating higher perceptions of usability for task two and mental workload had lower values indicating reduced mental workload for task two. Significant, positive correlations were found between perceived usability and mental workload. Findings show schema accuracy as a preliminary measure of users’ subjective usability of non-problem solving tasks, based on the type of task tested and demographic data of students. Study two examined experience level (experienced and un-experienced) effects mental schema accuracy, robustness, completion time, and errors using three computer-based tasks. Experienced participants showed lower values for number of errors and robustness than un-experienced users. Significant, positive correlations were found between schema accuracy and completion time, and errors and completion time. The findings support the use of experience to analyze the impact of mental schemas and performance measures. Study three explored the change in training methods (no-training, paper, or video) on user changes in mental schema accuracy, robustness, completion times and errors. Training improved robustness, specifically paper-based training. Performance results showed that students who spent small periods of time using the software more times a week had made fewer errors and had more robust schemas. Demographic experience categories found that participants who spent more time using the software had fewer errors. Significant, positive correlations were found between schema accuracy and robustness. These results show that training improves mental schema robustness and reduces the number of errors while completing computer based tasks.

In my thesis I discuss the cost effectiveness of usability testing of technical documents and how any size company with any size budget can implement usability testing. Usability is achieved when the people who use products or technical documents can do so quickly and easily to accomplish their own tasks. Usability testing is best defined as the process of studying users to determine a documentation project's effectiveness for its intended audience. Users are tired of dealing with confusing and unintuitive technical documentation that forces them to either call customer service for help on simple issues or throw out the product in favor of one that is more usable or provides better technical documentation. That is why all technical communicators should include usability testing as part of the technical documentation production cycle. To help technical communicators understand the importance of usability testing, I discuss the cost effectiveness of usability testing and share ways that companies with large budgets and companies with small budgets can begin incorporating usability testing. Then I provide information on all the steps that are necessary for technical communicators to implement usability testing of technical documentation at their company. Options are presented for everything from bare minimum usability testing with a shoe-string budget with pencils, note pads, and only a handful of users to full scale usability testing in large laboratories with the latest equipment and a wide variety of users. The research provides examples from real companies, advice from experienced technical communicators and usability experts, and research demonstrating how many resources are truly required to benefit from usability testing. By showing technical communicators that usability testing is cost effective and that there are many options for implementing usability testing no matter how large or small their budget is, I hope to empower technical communicators to start including usability testing as part of the documentation production cycle at their companies.

Hemophilia is a genetic disorder that is caused by deficiencies in coagulation factor VIII and factor IX. Optimal management of hemophilia requires tailoring the dose of treatment to the individual patient’s need. This tailoring is based on several clinical considerations, for example, bleeding phenotype and desired level of activity, and estimated individual pharmacokinetic (PK) parameters. While a classical PK approach would require several post infusion blood samples taken over multiple days, a population PK approach might enable individual assessment using fewer samples. Health information technologies can support implementation of sophisticated, easily available, point-of care resources to estimate PK values with a population approach. The Web Accessible Population Pharmacokinetic Service-Hemophilia (WAPPS-Hemo) is a proposal for such a solution, developed at McMaster University. Once tested, it will be offered to hemophilia centres worldwide. The objective of the study was to investigate the ease of use (usability) of the WAPPS-Hemo web interface among clinicians and other people who treat hemophilia through two iterative cycles of usability testing. The total number of participants was 13, and they were physicians, nurses and research coordinators. The think aloud technique was selected for testing to gain feedback and comments on the participants’ thought processes while interacting with the system and discover interface design problems. Additionally, the System Usability Scale (SUS) questionnaire was used to obtain data on user satisfaction. The initial assessment of the prototypal WAPPS-Hemo interface with SUS reported a score of 70.5, which is considered an above average score. We received many useful suggestions through two iterations of user testing, ending with a final SUS score of 73 after implementation of the suggested improvements. Verbal feedback from users in the second round showed that users experienced an easier and more intuitive interaction with the system. Usability testing and analyses were conducted in this study to discover user interface issues and to determine the usability and learnability of the WAPPS-Hemo service among various potential users. Through iterative cycles, application of the think aloud technique, and the SUS questionnaire, we optimized the usability of the WAPPS- Hemo program and have moved to implementation (June 2015). / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)