This thesis aimed to investigate how moderated remote usability testing (RUT) tools can support the moderator's role and skills to create design principles for RUT tools. The study gathered knowledge of how to perform a RUT and the skills of a good moderator. This study resulted in a contextual inquiry with findings of what could support or obstruct the moderator according to the moderator's role and skills, opportunities and difficulties with RUT tools. The findings led to design principles of designing RUT tools to support the moderator's role and skills. The study resulted in usability, user and functional requirements with a prototype of a RUT tool to visualize how to use the design principles. / Denna studie syftade till att undersöka hur verktyg för modererade användbarhetstests på distans kan designas för att stödja moderatorns roll och färdigheter. Studien innefattar kunskap om hur man utför ett modererat användbarhetstest på distans och vilka färdigheter som krävs för att vara en bra moderator i sådana test. Studien innefattade en fältstudie som resulterade i funktioner i ett verktyg för användbarhetstester på distans som kan stödja eller hindra en moderators utförande med avseende på dess roll och färdigheter samt möjligheter och svårigheter i sådana verktyg. Designprinciper skapades i syfte att vägleda designen av verktyg för användbarhetstest på distans som stödjer moderatorns roll och färdigheter. Studien resulterade i användbarhets, användar- och funktionskrav som med designprinciperna visualiserades i en prototyp av ett verktyg för modererad användbarhetstest på distans.

This project aims to investigate the impact of culture on the results of established methods of usability testing. The production and use of technologically advanced information and communication applications are no longer restricted to the Western world, and there are indications that usability testing procedures developed for use in, e.g., Europe or the US do not give reliable results in countries such as India, China or Malaysia. This project is an in-depth investigation of the cultural specifics that go into usability test situations in three countries: Denmark, India and China. In a second phase we want to explore possible developments of the testing methods in order to avoid cultural bias and produce comparable results across countries of the world / <p>This research is a part of project of Culturalusability. http://culturalusability.cbs.dk/</p>

Usability testing is an important part of product design that offers developers insight into a product’s ability to help users achieve their goals. Despite the usefulness of usability testing, human usability evaluations are costly and time-intensive processes. Developing methods to reduce the time and costs of usability evaluations is important for organizations to improve the usability of their products without expensive investments. One prospective solution to this is the application of facial emotion recognition to automate the collection of qualitative metrics normally identified by human usability evaluators. In this paper, facial emotion recognition (FER) was applied to mock usability recordings to evaluate how well FER could parse moments of emotional significance. To determine the accuracy of FER in this context, a FER Python library created by Justin Shenk was compared with data tags produced by human reporters. This study found that the facial emotion recognizer could only match its emotion recognition output with less than 40% of the human-reported emotion timestamps and less than 78% of the emotion data tags were recognized at all. The current lack of consistency with the human reported emotions found in this thesis makes it difficult to recommend using FER for parsing moments of semantic significance over conventional human usability evaluators.

An estimated 20% of Swedish schoolchildren suffer from some form of reading difficulty such as dyslexia. Late diagnosis of dyslexia leads to consequences for both the individual and society. To identify such reading difficulties, over 50 different forms of reading assessments are being used in schools around Sweden. By using eye-tracking technology, one could minimize the time for these assessments and make them less prone to external biases. In this study such a solution is evaluated with regards to usability. Using widely available technology, mobile devices with built-in front-facing cameras, a reading assessment with integrated eye-tracking was developed. The aim of this study was to evaluate the usability of the solution and find areas to be improved. This was done through allowing 14 participants to use the application and answer a usability survey based on the System Usability Scale (SUS). The results showed an average SUS-score of 87.0, equivalent to a grade of A+, which reflected the positive responses in the open questions of the survey. The main area of improvement found was the speed of the calibration process, as this solution was found too slow. To further improve this solution, head and hand movement must be taken into consideration by the eye-tracker to allow free hand-held usage with less supervision. Further improvements such as larger screens and added machine learning are also suggested. Conclusively the results of this study show promise if such improvements are accomplished. / Uppskattningsvis lider 20% av svenska skolbarn av någon form av lässvårighet, däribland dyslexi. En sen diagnos av dyslexi leder till konsekvenser för både individen och samhället. För att identifiera sådana läsproblem används över 50 olika läsförståelsetest i skolor runt om i Sverige. Genom att använda ögonspårning (eye-tracking) kan man minimera tiden för dessa bedömningar och göra dem mindre benägna att påverkas av yttre faktorer. I denna studie utvärderas en sådan lösning med avseende på användbarhet. Med hjälp av allmänt tillgänglig teknik, mobila enheter med inbyggda framåtvända kameror, utvecklades en läsanalys med integrerad ögonspårning. Syftet med denna studie var att utvärdera användbarheten av denna lösning och hitta områden som skulle kunna förbättras. Detta gjordes genom att låta 14 deltagare använda applikationen och svara på en användbarhetsenkät baserad på System Usability Scale (SUS). Resultaten visade en genomsnittlig SUS-poäng på 87,0, vilket motsvarar betyget A +, samt återspeglade de positiva svaren i enkäten i undersökningen. Det främsta förbättringsområdet som hittades var kalibreringsprocessens hastighet, eftersom denna ansågs vara för långsam. För att ytterligare förbättra denna lösning måste huvud- och handrörelser tas i beaktande av eye-trackern för att möjliggöra fri handhållen användning med mindre översyn. Ytterligare förbättringar såsom större skärmar och tillagd maskininlärning föreslås också. Sammanfattningsvis visar resultaten av denna studie lovande framtidsutsikter för den utvecklade lösningen om sådana förbättringar tillämpas.

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Sammanfattning:Lärplattformar har kommit att integrera informationsteknologi med det traditionella lärandet. Det ger ett flexibelt sätt att ta till sig kunskap för studenter, där de inte är lika beroende av tid, plats eller andra frågor som kan hindra deras lärande.Syftet med vår undersökning är att få en djupare förståelse om It's Learnings funktioner och dess utvecklingsprocess. Vidare undersöks om Malmö Högskolas användande och utformning av It's Learning möter studenternas krav på användbarhet och funktionalitet och om resultatet i så fall kan härledas till beprövad teori inom området. En av undersökningarna fokuserar på första- och tredjeårsstudenters erfarenheter vad gäller användning av It's Learning. För att besvara syftet används två olika metoder. Kvalitativa intervjuer används för att få all den information som behövs om It's Learning som lärplattform och kvantitativ enkätundersökning har används för att studera användbarhet och funktionalitet hos Malmö Högskolas lärplattform. Den kvantitativa undersökningen baseras på Jacob Nielsens användbarhetsheuristisk och Marc J. Rosenbergs centrala funktioner utifrån i vilken omfattning It's Learning följer dessa.\\ Resultatet som framkom från vår enkätundersökning visar att det finns skillnader mellan de båda studentgruppernas upplevelser av hur It's Learning uppfyller deras krav på användbarhet. En av de största skillnaderna som framkom var att förstaårsstudenterna upplever It's Learning både mer svår att hantera och förstå i förhållande till tredjeårsstudenterna. Båda studentgrupperna upplever att It's Learning följer de flesta riktlinjer utifrån Nielsens användbarhetsheuristik. Våra genomförda intervjuer visar vidare att It's Learning följer vissa riktlinjer utifrån Rosenbergs kärnfunktioner för en lärplattform. / Abstract:Learning platforms have emerged to integrate information technology with the traditional learning. This provides a flexible way of learning for students who would not be dependent on time, place or other issues that would prevent their learning. The purpose of this thesis is to gain knowledge about It's Learning and its developing process. And to investigate if Malmö University's learning platform, It's Learning, meets students' demands on usability and functionality and that could result in a case derived to a proven theory in the field. The investigation focuses on the first and third year students' experiences in the use of It's Learning.To answer the purpose, two methods are used. An interview is used as a qualitative method to get all needed information about It's Learning. Further, a questionnaire is used as a quantitative method to study the usability and functionality of Malmö University's learning platform. This investigation is based on theoretical perspective Jacob Nielsen's usability heuristic and Marc. J Rosenberg's core functions and how much It's Learning followed them. The results that were conducted from the survey and the interviews shows that there is a difference between the two student groups and their experiences also whether It's Learning meets their demands for usability. One of the biggest differences is that first year students experience It's Learning as more difficult to manage and understand in comparison to third years students. However, both case groups showed that It's Learning followed to a certain degree, Nielsen's usability heuristic. However, the results that are conducted from the interviews shows that It's Learning follows most of Rosenberg's core functions of a learning management system.

Denna rapport avser att undersöka för- och nackdelar med att utveckla ett för ändamålet specialanpassat system eller utnyttja de standardsystem, som i det aktuella fallet tryckerikoncernen JMS redan äger och använder. Genom en mer noggrann definiering av ickefunktionella krav på bland annat användbarhet har en specialanpassad prototyp framställts. I projektet användes metoder för kravinsamling som ledde till en kravspecifikation och i sin tur slutade med en färdig prototyp. Prototypen jämfördes med två standardsystem genom användartester och intervjuer. Prototypen visade sig leva upp till de krav som upptäcktes. Majoriteten av testpersonerna föredrog ett enklare avskalat system, vilket prototypen upplevdes som, före system med mycket information och funktioner. Med tanke på kostnaden rekommenderas dock JMS att försöka strukturera upp ett av de i företaget befintliga systemen och använda detta istället för att utveckla och implementera ytterligare ett nytt system i företaget. / This report intends to explore the pros and cons of developing a customized system or use the standard system, which in this case printing JMS Group already owns and uses. With a more accurate definition of non-functional requirements such as usability, has a custom-made prototype been built. The project used methods of requirements gathering that led to a specification and ended with a finished prototype. The prototype was compared with two standard systems through user testing and interviews. The prototype proved to live up to the requirements discovered. The majority of test subjects preferred a simpler clean system, which the prototype was, to systems with a lot of information and functions. Given the cost JMS was recommended to structure one of the systems that they already owns and uses instead of developing and implementing a new system further in the company.

Delays in the process of diagnosing and treating cancer are common and lead to confusion and undesirable outcomes. Care coordinators are often embedded within the system of care to manage follow-up care. Electronic and real-time reminder systems can be used to support the care coordinator’s work, but electronic health record (EHR) usability is known to be poor. This study, completed in collaboration with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Connecticut Healthcare System, evaluated the Cancer Coordination and Tracking System (CCTS), an EHR-linked, web-based tool for cancer care management. A set of expert-driven and user-driven usability engineering methods was applied to comprehensively identify and analyze usability problems within the system. Ten current CCTS users were engaged in the study to help identify problem. 101 (62.3%) problems were identified through expert-driven methods, 56 (34.6%) were identified by user-driven methods, and 5 (3.1%) were identified through both types of methods. The list of 162 unique problems were prioritized and twelve high priority problems were highlighted. Design recommendations were developed to address each of these high priority problems.

Agile development methodologies are becoming increasingly popular because they address many risks of software development through things such as quick delivery of working software and responsiveness to change. As agile organizations have begun to develop more user interface-intensive systems, they understand the value and need to design more usable systems. The fields of usability engineering and human-computer interaction are focused on exploring how people interact with computer systems. However, much of this work is inaccessible to agile practitioners because it does not align with core agile values and because there has not been adequate transfer of knowledge between practice and academia. This motivated my creation of the eXtreme Scenario-Based Design (XSBD) process, an integrated agile usability approach. XSBD provides key usability benefits of the scenario-based design (SBD) approach (an established usability engineering process) and is compatible with an agile development framework modeled on leading agile processes like XP and Scrum. XSBD was designed for use in projects in which a large part of the overall system quality is determined by system usability. This requires close communication and coordination of the disparate usability and agile development work practices. A core aspect of XSBD is the central design record (CDR), which is the shared design representation that guides usability design. It tightly couples usability evaluation results to design features and high level project goals, allowing the usability engineer to leverage key benefits of traditional SBD while working in an agile framework. I began developing XSBD at Virginia Tech, evaluating it through several student-led development efforts. To improve and demonstrate the applicability of XSBD in practice, I partnered with Meridium, Inc., a software and services company. Using an action research case study method, I worked with several development teams there who used XSBD to develop products. This directly linked usability and HCI research to practice, allowing me to demonstrate XSBD's utility in practice while evaluating it from a theoretical perspective. The results of this work suggest several avenues for further work both to increase its adoption in practice and to link to existing HCI research efforts such as design rationale and knowledge reuse. / Ph. D.

Previous usability evaluation method (UEM) comparison studies have noted an evaluator effect on problem detection in heuristic evaluation, with evaluators differing in problems found and problem severity judgments. There have been few studies of the evaluator effect in usability testing (UT), task-based testing with end-users. UEM comparison studies focus on counting usability problems detected, but we also need to assess the content of usability problem descriptions (UPDs) to more fully measure evaluation effectiveness. The goals of this research were to develop UPD guidelines, explore the evaluator effect in UT, and evaluate the usefulness of the guidelines for grading UPD content. Ten guidelines for writing UPDs were developed by consulting usability practitioners through two questionnaires and a card sort. These guidelines are (briefly): be clear and avoid jargon, describe problem severity, provide backing data, describe problem causes, describe user actions, provide a solution, consider politics and diplomacy, be professional and scientific, describe your methodology, and help the reader sympathize with the user. A fourth study compared usability reports collected from 44 evaluators, both practitioners and graduate students, watching the same 10-minute UT session recording. Three judges measured problem detection for each evaluator and graded the reports for following 6 of the UPD guidelines. There was support for existence of an evaluator effect, even when watching pre-recorded sessions, with low to moderate individual thoroughness of problem detection across all/severe problems (22%/34%), reliability of problem detection (37%/50%) and reliability of severity judgments (57% for severe ratings). Practitioners received higher grades averaged across the 6 guidelines than students did, suggesting that the guidelines may be useful for grading reports. The grades for the guidelines were not correlated with thoroughness, suggesting that the guideline grades complement measures of problem detection. A simulation of evaluators working in groups found a 34% increase in severe problems found by adding a second evaluator. The simulation also found that thoroughness of individual evaluators would have been overestimated if the study had included a small number of evaluators. The final recommendations are to use multiple evaluators in UT, and to assess both problem detection and description when measuring evaluation effectiveness. / Ph. D.