Multimodale Anwendungen bieten den blinden Benutzern neue Möglichkeiten und Chancen, die durch Verlust des Sehsinnes entstandenen Defizite über andere Sinneskanäle auszugleichen. Die benutzerorientierte Gestaltung ist der sicherste Weg, um interaktive Systeme gebrauchstauglich zu gestalten. Dabei sind die Benutzer hauptsächlich an zwei Aktivitäten beteiligt. Dies sind die Nutzungsanforderungsanalyse und die Evaluation. Hinsichtlich dieser zwei Aktivitäten wurden in der vorliegenden Arbeit Usability-Methoden untersucht bzw. neu entwickelt, um die nutzerzentrierte Gestaltung multimodaler Anwendungen für blinde Benutzer zu unterstützen. Bezogen auf die Aktivität Nutzungsanforderungsanalyse wurde ein Verfahren entwickelt, welches speziell die Besonderheiten blinder Benutzer und multimodaler Anwendungen bei der Nutzungsanforderungsanalyse berücksichtigt. Zusätzlich wurden zwei Schritte des Verfahrens, die Erstellung mentaler Modelle und die Modalitätsauswahl, die speziell auf den Kontext multimodaler Anwendungen für blinde Benutzer ausgerichtet sind, weiter vertiefend untersucht. Für den Schritt Erstellung mentaler Modelle wurden zwei Erstellungsmethoden, Teaching-Back und Retrospective Think-Aloud, mit blinden Benutzern untersucht. Dabei sind sowohl die Gestaltung vom Teaching-Back als auch der Vergleich beider Methoden von Interesse. Für den Schritt Modalitätsauswahl stand die Analyse des multimodalen Nutzerverhaltens blinder Benutzer im Mittelpunkt. Vier Eingabemodalitäten, Sprache, Touchscreen-Gesten, Touchscreen-Tastatur und Touchscreen-Braille bzw. deren Kombinationen wurden unter Einfluss von acht Aufgabentypen bei der Bedienung einer mobilen multimodalen Navigationsanwendung untersucht. In Hinblick auf die Usability-Evaluationsmethoden wurde zuerst das Augenmerk auf die Auswertung und die Erhebung mentaler Karten von blinden Benutzern gerichtet, da sie eine wichtige Rolle bei der Entwicklung von Navigationssystemen spielen. Zwei Auswertungsmethoden für mentale Karten hinsichtlich des Überblicks- und Routenwissens wurden entwickelt. Beide Methoden ermöglichen es, die mentalen Karten anhand speziell entwickelter Bewertungskriterien, wie Anzahl der Elemente und Eigenschaften der Straßen, quantitativ zu bewerten. Bezüglich der Erhebung mentaler Karten wurden zwei Erhebungsmethoden – Rekonstruktion mit Magnetstreifen und verbale Beschreibung – mit blinden Probanden hinsichtlich unterschiedlicher Aspekten untersucht. In zwei weiteren Untersuchungen wurden taktiles Paper-Prototyping und computerbasiertes Prototyping für die frühen Entwicklungsphasen bzw. Labor- und synchroner Remote-Test für die späteren Entwicklungsphasen mit blinden Benutzern verglichen. Dabei wurden die Effektivität der Evaluation, die Erkenntnisse und Erfahrungen der Probanden sowie des Testleiters als Vergleichskriterien in beiden Untersuchungen eingesetzt.

Business Intelligence (BI) applications are consulted by their users on a daily basis. BI information obtained assist users to make business decisions and allow for a deeper understanding of the business and its driving forces. In a mining environment companies need to derive maximum benefit from BI applications, therefore these applications need to be used optimally. Optimal use depends on various factors including the usability of the product. The documented lack of usability evaluation guidelines provides the rationale for this study. The purpose is to investigate the usability evaluation of BI applications in the context of a coal mining organization. The research is guided by the question: What guidelines should be used to evaluate the usability of BI applications. The research design included the identification of BI usability issues based on the observation of BI users at the coal mining organization. The usability criteria extracted from the usability issues were compared and then merged with general usability criteria from literature to form an initial set of BI usability evaluation criteria. These criteria were used as the basis for a heuristic evaluation of the BI application used at the coal mining organization. The same application was also evaluated using the Software Usability Measurement Inventory (SUMI) standardised questionnaire. The results from the two evaluations were triangulated to provide a refined set of criteria. The main contribution of the study is the heuristic evaluation guidelines for BI applications (based on these criteria). These guidelines are grouped in the following functional areas: visibility, flexibility, cognition, application behaviour, error control and help, affect and BI elements. / Information Science / M.Sc. (Information Systems)

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.

Submitted by Geyciane Santos (geyciane_thamires@hotmail.com) on 2015-06-17T14:51:52Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação- Prsicila Silva Fernandes.pdf: 8682442 bytes, checksum: cf742a434c25244708ee5ed78c8e4718 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Divisão de Documentação/BC Biblioteca Central (ddbc@ufam.edu.br) on 2015-06-17T20:42:53Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação- Prsicila Silva Fernandes.pdf: 8682442 bytes, checksum: cf742a434c25244708ee5ed78c8e4718 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Divisão de Documentação/BC Biblioteca Central (ddbc@ufam.edu.br) on 2015-06-17T20:43:53Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação- Prsicila Silva Fernandes.pdf: 8682442 bytes, checksum: cf742a434c25244708ee5ed78c8e4718 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-06-17T20:43:53Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação- Prsicila Silva Fernandes.pdf: 8682442 bytes, checksum: cf742a434c25244708ee5ed78c8e4718 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-02-08 / CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / In recent years, Web applications have been intensive used in current society, and their user population comprises since young kids to elderly individuals. The success of Web applications can be determined by two features: their fast evolution and their usability. Despite the great evolution of Web applications, users often face errors while using them, caused by not intuitive interfaces. A large proportion of this problem is on the development process of these applications, which sometimes does not embody usability principals and methods. Usability evaluations on Web development processes are often avoided by industry professionals due to their lack of experience in the field. Also, usability evaluation can be expensive in terms of time and human resources. Our motivation consists on assist novice inspectors, such as developers with little knowledge on usability, improving the quality of their Web applications by producing better interfaces, with a lower cost. We developed a new usability inspection technique, called WE-QT (Web Evaluation Question Technique). The WE-QT technique was specifically tailored for usability evaluation of Web applications for novice inspectors. Our technique uses a question based approach to guide the inspectors uncovering usability problems. We adopted an experimental methodology to develop WE-QT. This thesis describes the WE-QT’s creation, a feasibility study and two observational studies. Our goal is to increase the quality of Web applications and improve the user’s interaction in this technology. / Nos últimos anos, aplicações Web têm sido amplamente utilizadas na sociedade, e sua população de usuários compreende desde crianças jovens a idosos. O sucesso das aplicações da Web pode ser determinado por duas características: sua rápida evolução e sua usabilidade. Apesar da grande evolução das aplicações Web, os usuários muitas vezes se deparam com erros ao utilizá-las, causados por interfaces não intuitivas. Grande parte deste problema está no processo de desenvolvimento destas aplicações, que às vezes não incorporam princípios e métodos de usabilidade. Avaliações de usabilidade nos processos de desenvolvimento são muitas vezes evitadas por profissionais da indústria, devido à sua falta de experiência na área, e avaliações de usabilidade podem ser caras em termos de tempo e de recursos humanos. A motivação deste trabalho consiste em ajudar os inspetores novatos, tais como desenvolvedores com pouco conhecimento em usabilidade, a melhorar a qualidade de suas aplicações Web, com um custo menor. Foi desenvolvida uma nova técnica de inspeção de usabilidade, chamada WE-QT (Web Evaluation Question Technique). A técnica WE-QT foi desenvolvida especificamente para avaliação de usabilidade de aplicações Web por inspetores novatos. A WE-QT utiliza uma abordagem baseada em perguntas para orientar os inspetores a detectar defeitos de usabilidade. Foi adotada uma metodologia experimental para desenvolver WE-QT. Esta dissertação descreve a criação da WE-QT, um estudo de viabilidade e dois estudos de observação. Nosso objetivo é aumentar a qualidade de aplicações Web e melhorar a interação do usuário nesta tecnologia.

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 are 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.

Commercial off-the-shelf enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems have been adopted by large companies to support their inter- and intra-business processes. Midsize market firms are now investing in ERP systems too. However, research has indicated that about three quarters of attempted ERP projects turned out to be unsuccessful. A common problem encountered in adopting ERP software has been the issue of fit or alignment. This paper presents an ERP misfit analysis methodology, grounded on the task-technology fit theory and cognitive fit theory, for measuring misfits between ERP candidates and enterprise¡¦s requirements in ex-ante implementation. A decision support system prototype embedded the approach has been developed. A usability evaluation is performed on the prototype to demonstrate the approach. With this approach, organizations can more easily and systematically determine where the misfits are and the degree of misfits, thereby reducing the risks in implementing ERP systems. Our research contributes to the practical solution of the problem of misfit analysis.

The usability group at RISE Research Institute of Sweden primarily perform usability evaluations for their clients. Usability evaluations are performed on launched products as well as early prototypes, the purpose of these evaluations is to detect problems and give suggestions on how they can be solved. The usability group offers a variety of usability evaluations, such as expert evaluations where experts assess the usability of a product and user tests were participants are observed when preforming tasks with a product. Eye tracking is a relatively new tool that measures eye movement; this tool is used within the usability group at RISE today, mostly as a compliment in usability tests. No extensive analysis is made of the data collected using eye tracking, due to lack of time, resources and knowledge. The purpose of this project is to investigate whether and, if so, how eye tracking can be used efficiently to evaluate usability in user tests. At the start of the project a literature study, an analysis of the current state was carried out along with a practical exploration of the eye tracking technology and associated analysis tools. Based on the information gathered in the first part of the project, two directions were selected. A qualitative approach, with the aim of exploring and explaining why a usability issue arises, and a quantitative approach with the aim to compare two equivalent products and determining which one of them is best in a usability perspective. Early in the project challenges with the collection and evaluating eye tracking data were identified. These challenges were largely related to how a usability test is conducted. In order to further explore how to best perform a usability test using eye tracking, a pilot study was conducted in which the test object was a microwave oven. The goal of the pilot study was to develop a test setup to be able to collect eye tracking data with minimal impact on factors affecting the eye tracking data. Examples of factors are "think aloud" and that the test moderator asks questions during when the participant perform a task. Based on the insights from the pilot study, the test setup was further developed, and both a qualitative and quantitative method of data collection and analysis was developed. The test setup and the two methods were evaluated in a usability test with two clock radios. The results of the tests in this project show that the qualitative analysis of eye tracking data can gather detailed data on how a person searches for information when performing a given task. By looking at the eye movement pattern, you can get indications of shortcomings in the information layout of a particular product. Eye tracking allows you to understand why a person fails a task by checking if the test person saw the desired information without interpreting it or if the person completely missed the information that was necessary to complete the task. The quantitative analysis of eye tracking data could not detect any differences between the products tested to indicate differences in the overall usability. The conclusion is that a qualitative analysis is the most effective way to utilize eye tracking in usability tests of consumer products. / Usability-gruppen på RISE Research Institute of Sweden arbetar främst med att utvärdera användbarhet på produkter för olika kunder. Användbarhets-utvärderingar utförs på lanserade produkter så väl som tidiga prototyper. Syftet med dessa utvärderingar är att upptäcka problem relaterade till användbarhet och komma med förslag på hur problemen kan lösas. Usability-gruppen erbjuder en rad olika typer av utvärderingar av produkter, exempelvis expertutvärderingar där produktens användbarhet bedöms av experter, och användartester där man observerar när en testperson använder en produkt. Eye tracking är ett relativt nytt verktyg som mäter ögonrörelser, detta verktyg används inom usability- gruppen på RISE idag som ett komplement vid använbarhets-tester. Då man saknar tid, resurser och till viss del kunskap om verktygets tillämpning används eye tracking idag endast som ett passivt verktyg. Med detta menas att man samlar in data utan att utföra några djupare analyser. Syftet med detta examensarbete är att undersöka om och i så fall hur eye tracking kan användas på ett effektivt sätt för att utvärdera användbarhet i användartester. I starten av projektet genomfördes en litteraturstudie, en nulägesanalys samt praktisk utforskning av tekniken och tillhörande analysverktyg. Baserat på den information som samlades in i första delen av projektet valdes två inriktningar. En kvalitativ inriktning, med målet att utforska och förklara varför ett visst användbarhetsproblem uppstår, och en kvantitativ inriktning med målet att jämföra två likvärdiga produkter och bestämma vilken av dessa som har bäst användbarhet. Tidigt identifierades även utmaningar med insamling och utvärdering av eye tracking-data, dessa utmaningar visade sig till stor del bero på hur ett användartest genomförs. För att vidare utforska hur man bäst genomför ett användbarhets-test med hjälp av eye tracking gjordes därför en så kallad pilotstudie där testobjektet var en mikrovågsugn. Målet med denna var att hitta ett testupplägg för att samla in eye tracking-data med minimal påverkan av omgivande faktorer som påverkar datan. Exempel på faktorer skulle kunna vara att testpersonen får ”tänka högt” eller att testledaren ställer frågor under genomförandet av en uppgift. Baserat på insikterna från pilotstudien vidareutvecklades testupplägget, och både en kvalitativ såväl som kvantitativ metod för datainsamling och analys togs fram. Testupplägget och de två metoderna utvädrades genom ett användbarhetstest där två olika klockradios testades. Resultaten från testerna som genomförts i projektet visar att man med kvalitativ analys av eye tracking data kan samla in detaljerade data på hur en person letar efter information vid utförande av en given uppgift. Genom att titta på ögonens rörelsemönster kan man få indikationer på brister i informationslayouten på en viss produkt. Med hjälp av eye tracking kan man förstå varför en person misslyckas med en uppgift genom att se om testpersonen såg den önskade informationen utan att tolka den eller om personen helt missade den information som var nödvändig för att klara uppgiften. Den kvantitativa analysen av eye tracking data kunde inte påvisa några skillnader mellan de produkter som testades för att indikera skillnader i användbarhet. Slutsatsen är att en kvalitativ analys är det effektivaste sättet att nyttja eye tracking vid användbarhetstester av konsumentprodukter.

The aim with this thesis is to investigate two different methods used to test usability on web-sites to determine the advantages and disadvantages of two methods and compare the results. The two selected methods are the think aloud method and asynchronous remote method. Re-mote usability testing has existed for more than ten years but the possibilities with this meth-od needs to be explored more. To achieve the purpose of this thesis a case study was conducted on an e-commerce site and for the online remote usability testing software was used. The results of this study show that think aloud usability testing encounter more issues with the website than the remote usability testing.

In today’s era online social networks are getting extensive popularity among internet users. People are using online social networks for different purposes like sharing information, chatting with friends, family and planning to hang out. It is then no surprise that online social network should be easy to use and easily understandable. Previously many researchers have evaluated different online social networks but there is no such study which addresses usability concerns about online social network with a focus on Facebook on an academic level (using students as subjects). The main rationale behind this study is to find out efficiency of different usability testing techniques from social network’s point of view, with a focus on Facebook, and issues related to usability. To conduct this research, we have adopted the combination of both qualitative and quantitative approach. Graduate students from BTH have participated in usability tests. Our findings are that although think aloud is more efficient then remote testing, but this difference is not very significant. We found from survey that different usability issues are in Facebook profile, media, Picture Tagging, Chatting etc. / We have identified different usability issues in Facebook such as issues in media, chatting, facebook profile, changing profile name etc. Here we can say that although think aloud protocol is more efficient then remote testing but this difference is not very significant. We have also suggested some extension in usability testing techniques. If participants of usability test do not verbalize while interacting with the system and keep their focus on performing the test. After completion of each task participants can express their thoughts and opinions what they did. Furthermore we sent our founded results to developer for validation purpose. Developers replied that the results of this research are satisfactory. / Tariq Alam Address: Folkparksvagen 18:19, 37240 Ronneby, Sweden E-mail: chochoswati@hotmail.com, Muhammad Ali Address: Folkparksvagen 18:19, 37240 Ronneby, Sweden E-mail: alijpjgujrat@yahoo.com

An effective hypermedia educational system should be easy to use and understand. Different hypermedia educational systems have been evaluated for this purpose by researchers but there is no such study of student wiki system. To evaluate usability of a student wiki system i.e. FUKTwiki in the context of higher education, the authors adopt a multi-phased research approach. They conduct usability test of the system where graduate students are taken as subjects. The system is evaluated on the basis of results of usability test and a questionnaire specifically designed to know the subject‟s opinion. Further, to validate the findings a number of individual subjects participated in usability test and questionnaire are interviewed. The authors find that for higher education, student wiki systems could prove effective in student‟s learning but not with current set of tools and interfaces. Moreover it is important that a system should have sufficient amount of relevant and useful educational contents. There is need to improve student wiki systems in terms of interfaces, contents, and set of tools for creating and editing pages. / 0046739717017