FIT 2001 Week 5

Lecture

Today's lecture was on Usability Testing.

Usability evaluation which are formative and summative. Formative to form, Summative to sum.. Based on that, one can gather, to form feedback and to sum results i.e. measure effectiveness.

You can thus have analysis and empirical forms of evaluation.

An analytic evaluation is an analysis evaluation. Basically thinking through the system based on guidelines is one of the forms. Heuristic analysis goes in here. Heuristics is basically sort of like a rule of thumb. A set of rule of guidelines that one has reference to, to make a generally good form of evaluation.

The empirical form sounds more like experiements on guinea pig users. Well not to call them that but it is a test of the system through the use of actual users.

There are so many standards out there regarding usability and one controversial one which I happen to read was why Ubuntu switched to left side minimize, maximize and close buttons. It was found that it was actually more productive but me being a windows user felt ackward at first but who am I to complain about increased productivity. Eventually I adapt to that standard but shouldn't a standard be something intuitive and not adapted to? There was a lot of complaints about the buttons being the wrong side at first but eventually some conform and now it is as it is, but Ubuntu does have the ability to revert back to the original button position if user so wishes.

Tute 

In tutorial, I got to play a role playing game of facilitator and participant for Monash Library site for a Usability Test. This would be an empirical type though.

Going through the Monash Library system and found much difficulty. My participants had some trouble using the search key word and they would rather search using google then the library's search function. As a participant I felt that I could generally find stuff that I want because I am so used to searching short key words and if I can't find the book that I want, I look for the location of a similar sounding book and just go to that section, its bound to be there buried among the tons of results and besides, they are of similar value.

Anyway can't spend too long on the blog, assignment due on Sunday..