Although research and practice have shown that the success of a usability engineering program depends on the identification and correction of usability problems, these problems remain an underutilized source of information. Insufficient guidance regarding the capture of usability problem data results in the loss of information during the problem reporting phase as problem reports are often vague, imprecise, and incomplete. In addition, the absence of a framework for understanding, comparing, categorizing, and analyzing those problems, and their relationship to development context, not only constrains product improvement, but hampers efforts to improve the user interface development process. A new taxonomic model (the Usability Problem Taxonomy) is presented which contributes to both product and process improvement. The Usability Problem Taxonomy (UPT) is used to classify and organize usability problems detected on interactive software development projects. Individual UPT categories are associated with two aspects of development context: developer roles and skills, and development activities, methods, and techniques. Two studies were conducted during the course of this research. The first study showed that the UPT can be used to classify usability problems reliably. Findings indicated that level of agreement among classifiers (beyond chance agreement) was statistically significant. Findings in the second study led to the identification of roles and activities that address individual UPT categories as well as those that do not. Procedures for using the UPT in both product and process improvement are outlined. Examples are presented that illustrate how the UPT can be used to generate higher quality problem descriptions and to group those problem descriptions prior to prioritization and correction. In addition, steps that guide developers in diagnosing weaknesses in the current user interface development process are enumerated. Possible improvement strategies are presented that focus on the selection of specific development activities and team members appropriate for a given project. / Ph. D.

Laboratory usability tests can be a rich source of usability information for software design, but are expensive to run and involve time-consuming data analysis. Expert review of software is cheaper, but highly dependent on the experience of the expert. Techniques are needed that maintain user involvement while reducing both the cost of user involvement and the time required to analyze data. The User Action Framework (UAF) is a classification scheme for usability problems that facilitates data analysis and reusability of information learned from one project to another, but is also reliant on expert interpretation of usability data, and classification can be difficult when user-supplied problem descriptions are incomplete. This study explored end-user classification of self-reported critical incidents (usability issues) using the UAF, a technique that was hoped to reduce expert interpretation of usability problems. It also explored end-user critical incident reporting from a usability session recording, rather than reporting incidents as soon as they occur, a technique that could be used in future studies to compare effectiveness of usability methods. Results indicate that users are not good at diagnosing their own critical incidents due to the level of detail required for proper classification, although observations suggest that users were able to provide usability information that would not have been captured by an expert observer. The recording technique was successful, and is recommended for future studies to further explore differences in the kind of information that can be gathered from end-users and from experts during usability studies. / Master of Science

Current situation: Standardized terminology of the Omaha system brings new opportunities for nurses providing community care. Objectives: Four objectives have been defined for this study: to implement the Omaha system in the nursing documentation for the purpose of verification of nursing care in community practice - to characterize the problems of patients with gastrointestinal diseases as per the Problem Classification Scheme - to map the links between problems and interventions as per the Intervention Scheme - to evaluate the problem results using the Problem Rating Scale for Outcomes of the Omaha system. Methodology: The research method used was based on the study by Kathryn H. Bowles (2000) addressing problems of patients and nurse interventions. The quantitative research method was implemented by inquiry using nursing documentation with the Omaha system implemented. The data acquired was tested using the software tools SPSS 22.0 and MS Excel. Research set: It consisted of 103 patients with gastrointestinal diseases. The inquiry was carried out by contact persons - nurses of the gastroenterology department. Results: Patients with gastrointestinal diseases suffering from a wide range of problems corresponding to given character of diseases, which predominantly occur in the Physiological Domain and Health-Related Behavior Domain. In terms of mapping of links between problems and interventions, the results have proven a high usability of the objectives defined in the Intervention Scheme in community practice. The interventions were mostly determined in the categories Treatments and Procedures and Surveillance. Statistical differences have been confirmed in the documentation of interventions in individual categories for patient problems as well as for the selection of interventions in individual categories with respect to the type of given gastrointestinal disease. The study results have proven a significant improvement of knowledge, behaviour and status for individual problems, which is shown in comparison of final values with the initial values of problem results. The implementation of the selected interventions as per the Intervention Scheme resulted in a reduction or elimination of ? of problems. Conclusions: The results of the research inquiry clearly show that the Omaha system is an appropriate tool for documentation of all stages of the nursing process in the community care. Implementation of the functional documentation in community practice requires the Czech version of the Omaha system and electronic form of the documentation, which are absent at present.