Heuristic evaluation is a form of usability inspection where usability specialists review each element of a user interface and compare it against accepted heuristics (usability principles). It is a discount usability engineering method for quick, cheap, and easy evaluation of a user interface design. The main goal of heuristic evaluations is to identify any problems […]
Usability testing involves typical users using the system (or product) in a realistic environment. There are two main types of usability testing: formative evaluation and summative evaluation. Formative evaluation: Formative evaluation is conducted early in the design process to find and fix problems as part of an iterative design process to make an interface more […]
Prototyping is a method used by designers to acquire feedback from users about future designs. It is an essential element of an iterative design approach, where designs are created, evaluated, and refined until the desired performance or usability is achieved. Prototyping can occur at a number of points in the design process, at varying levels […]
Regardless to how carefully a system is designed, all theories must be tested using usability tests. Test early. Test often. There are two major types of methods to assess the usability: usability evaluations and usability tests. Usability evaluation techniques invalve usability experts evaluating designs by “walking through” designs based on user and tasks. Usability tests […]
Usability tests are typically held in a specially designed room called a usability lab. In the usability lab, users are studied interacting with a system for the sake of evaluating the system’s usability. The lab is split into two rooms that are divided by a one-way mirrored window that allows observers to watch the test without […]
The objective of the “Produce design solution” phase is to create and develop a user interface design that is based on the requirements specification. Simple and sketchy early designs will mature into one final design through an iterative process of evaluation and redesign. The following techniques can be used to produce design solutions:
Identify any business requirements or user goals that must be met for the product to be successful. In this phase of “specify the user and organizational requirements”, user and business requirements should be derived and objectives set with appropriate tradeoffs identified between the different requirements. The following techniques can gather useful information about requirements:
The contextual inquiry is a specific type of interview to obtain information about the context of use, where users are first asked a set of standard questions and then observed and questioned while they work in their own environments. This technique is generally used at the beginning of the design process and is good for […]
The objectives in the phase of “specify the context of use” is to know the environment in which the product is going to be used. You have to understand your user community. When designing a successful product, you need to verify or challenge your assumptions about users. To learn about users’ realities, you need to […]