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Interactive system developers spend most of their time and resources on user interface evaluation in traditional usability laboratories. Since the network itself and the remote work setting have become parts of usage patterns, evaluators do not have unlimited access to representative users for user interface evaluation. Reproducing the user's work context in a laboratory setting is also difficult. These problems have led to the concept of Remote usability evaluation that takes interface evaluation of any application beyond the laboratory setting. The main aim of this thesis work is to develop a tool that can record problems faced by remote users in the form of text and video. The text report and video, which is a sequence of the user's actions while encountering the problem, would help evaluators in preparing usability problem descriptions. This thesis reports the development of the remote usability evaluation method and the process of usability evaluation performed in enhancing features offered by the tool. / Master of Science

Technology plays an increasingly important role in modern health care. This thesis presents an approach to usability evaluation of mobile information and communications technologies designed for diabetes patients&rsquo / use in their daily lives. According to our study conducted on 60 diabetes patients, several important findings were obtained. Fifty nine (98.3%) diabetes patients were highly satisfied with the mobile health technology and expressed that they would use it, and found the measured values reliable. For 57 (95%) diabetes patients / measuring, checking and accessing the blood glucose level easily anytime and anywhere were very important. Fifty six (93.3%) said that they would wish to send their blood glucose levels to their physicians via e-mail. When participants were asked to provide a decision on future health care, predominate number of participants said they would change their lifestyle rather than visit a doctor regardless of their blood glucose level. In conclusion, little is known about such effects of mobile information and communications technologies in self-management care situations. It is clear that usability studies in the field are more difficult to conduct than laboratory evaluations. Further studies with larger sample sizes are needed to further evaluate these initial findings.

As an increasingly powerful, interactive, and dynamic medium for sharing information, the World Wide Web (Web) has found many educational applications. Because of educational benefits for both learners and educators, Web-based courses and programs have increasingly been developed and implemented by many academic institutions, organizations, and companies worldwide (Aggarwal & Brento, 2000). This study, however, asserts that many of the developmental approaches lack three important considerations to be used for implementing learning applications based on the Web: (1) integration of the human-computer interface design with instructional design, (2) development of the evaluation framework to improve the overall quality of Web-based learning support environments, and (3) development of an individualistic approach to the Web hosting of courses. This study explored the three Web-based learning environment weaknesses while developing a user-centered, Web-based learning support environment for Global Positioning System (GPS) education: Web-based distance and distributed learning (WD2L) environment. Research goals of the study were all concerned with the improvement of the design process and usability of the WD2L environment based on a theory-based Integrated Design Process (IDP) proposed in the study. Results indicated that the proposed IDP was effective in that the study showed (1) the WD2L environment's equivalence to traditional supplemental learning, especially as a Web-based supplemental learning program and (2) users' positive perceptions of WD2L environment resources. The study also confirmed that for an e-learning environment to be successful, various aspects of the learning environment as a Web-based supplemental learning program should be considered such as application domain knowledge (i.e., target subject field), conceptual learning theory, instructional design, human-computer interface design, and evaluation about the overall quality of the learning environment. / Ph. D.

Medius is a software company which provides IT-solutions that streamlines and automates business processes. The purpose with this thesis was to investigate the possibility to integrate usability evaluation in the development process of Medius software MediusFlow. How such integration would be done, and which usability evaluation methods could be used. To be able to provide a suggestion, a prestudy was conducted, this in order to get a good overview of Medius as a company as well as the development process of MediusFlow. With the prestudy as a basis, the main study was conducted, and four different usability evaluation methods were chosen. In this study, the four chosen methods were Cognitive Walkthrough, Coaching Method, Consistency Inspection and Question-Asking protocol. These usability evaluation methods were carried out, evaluated and analyzed.  Based on the studies and the literature, a suggestion regarding integration of usability evaluations was made.  The result from this case study was presented as a process chart, where the different phases in Medius software development process are matched together with suiting usability evaluation methods. The relevant phases and their suggested methods: Preparation phase - Cognitive Walkthrough and Coaching Method in combination with Thinking-Aloud and Interviews Hardening phase - Coaching Method in combination with Thinking-Aloud and Interviews, as well as Consistency Inspection Maintenance - Field observation This result is a part of the overall work towards a more user-centered design of the software.

In 1998, the United States Congress amended Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act to require federal agencies to make electronic and information technology accessible. The first accessibility guidelines from the World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Accessibility Initiative, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0, were published in 1999. This study tests the usable accessibility of cultural institution web sites. Four cultural institution web sites were selected, two that were WCAG 1.0 compliant and that were not, were selected for evaluation. A combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis was conducted. Significant differences were found in the perceived usability of the guideline-compliant web sites; significance was found for one of three tasks. Overall, the guideline-compliant sites received higher usability ratings, but the task completion rates did not support a claim of greater usability.

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.

On behalf of Inspectera HK AB in Norrköping a web-based drawing tool has been developed in Java, mainlywith the library Google Web Toolkit (GWT). The purpose of this tool is to facilitate both the staff's at Inspecteraand their client's work with different types of drawings such as blueprints for pest control, fire protection andespecially drawings of the company's e-service of self-checks. Besides developing the drawing tool usabilitytesting and a usability evaluation has been performed.

This thesis describes a research study in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), specifically usability evaluation. The research investigated ways to optimise the usability of Web sites. It specifically compared Flash and HTML versions of several different types of Web sites. The study commenced with a literature review regarding the process of usability evaluation of Web sites. Various usability evaluation methods and techniques were explored, and two emerging techniques were chosen for further investigation: (1) a contingent heuristic approach; and (2) eye gaze tracking. In order to confirm that these two techniques can be used effectively for Web site usability evaluations, two experiments were conducted to evaluate the usability of Web sites. The first experiment utilised an online questionnaire derived from the Website Usability Contingent Evaluation Tool (WUCET), which was based on the contingent heuristic approach. The second experiment involved eye gaze tracking with the faceLAB system, while participants interacted with Web sites of different types. Both experiments utilised Flash and HTML versions of the same set of Web sites. By analysing data collected from the experiments, comparisons between the usability of Flash and HTML versions were made. The results from quantitative and qualitative analyses of survey responses suggested that Flash version of Web sites, in general, provided higher usability than HTML version of Web sites, but eye gaze tracking data analyses showed no significant difference between the two versions. However, analyses of the eye tracking data were useful for improving understanding of the ways in which users interact with different versions of the Web sites. In addition, other influential factors that could affect the perceived usability of the Web sites, such as user’s gender and previous experience with computers and the Web, were also considered. The results of the experiments showed that in regard to Flash and HTML implementations of Web sites, there was a difference in Web site usability perception patterns between male and female users, and also between users with long-term computer/Web experience and users with short-term experience. In addition, a range of different types (purposes) of Web sites were utilised. In this study, selected Web sites fall into three broad categories according to their main purpose: (1) information; (2) entertainment; and (3) e-commerce. It was discovered that the type of Web sites also influenced the usability of Flash and HTML versions of Web sites, as perceived by users.

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.