User Interface Design and Ergonomics - National Open University of ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

The preferred method for ensuring usability is to test actual users on a working system. Although, there are many methods for studying usability, the most basic and useful is user testing, which has three components: Get some representative users. Ask the users to perform representative tasks with the design. Observe what the users do, where they succeed, and where they have difficulties with the user interface. It is important to test users individually and let them solve any problems on their own. If you help them or direct their attention to any particular part of the screen, you will bias the test. Rather than running a big, expensive study, it's better to run many small tests and revise the design between each one so you can fix the usability flaws as you identify them. Iterative design is the best way to increase the quality of user experience. The more versions and interface ideas you test with users, the better. Usability plays a role in each stage of the design process. The resulting need for multiple studies is one reason to make individual studies fast and cheap, and to perform usability testing early in the design process. During user interface design stage, the following are the major usability guidelines:- Before starting the new design, test the old design to identify the good parts that you should keep or emphasize, and the bad parts that give users trouble. Test competitors' designs to get data on a range of alternative designs. Conduct a field study to see how users behave in their natural habitat. Make paper prototypes of one or more new design ideas and test them. The less time you invest in these design ideas the better, because you'll need to change them all based on the test results. Refine the design ideas that test best through multiple iterations, gradually moving from low-fidelity prototyping to high-fidelity representations that run on the computer. Test each iteration. Inspect the design relative to established usability guidelines, whether from your own earlier studies or published research. Once you decide on and implement the final design, test it again. Subtle usability problems always creep in during implementation. Do not defer user testing until you have a fully implemented design. If you do, it will be impossible to fix the vast majority of the critical usability problems that the test uncovers. Many of these problems are likely to be structural, and fixing them would require major re-architecting. The only way to a high-quality user experience is to start user testing early in the design process and to keep testing every step of the way. 3.3 USABILITY CONSIDERATIONS Usability includes considerations such as: Who are the users, what do they know, and what can they learn? 94
What do users want or need to do? What is the general background of the users? What is the context in which the user is working? What has to be left to the machine? Answers to these can be obtained by conducting user and task analysis at the start of the project. Other considerations are:- • Can users easily accomplish their intended tasks? For example, can users accomplish intended tasks at their intended speed? • How much training do users need? • What documentation or other supporting materials are available to help the user? Can users find the solutions they seek in these materials? • What and how many errors do users make when interacting with the product? • Can the user recover from errors? What do users have to do to recover from errors? Does the product help users recover from errors? For example, does software present comprehensible, informative, nonthreatening error messages? • Are there provisions for meeting the special needs of users with disabilities? (accessibility) • Are there substantial differences between the cognitive approaches of various users that will affect the design or can a one size fits all approach be used? • Examples of ways to find answers to these and other questions are: userfocused requirements analysis, building user profiles, and usability testing. Discoverability Even if software is usable as per the above considerations, it may still be hard to learn to use. Other questions that must be asked are: o Is the user ever expected to do something that is not obvious? (e.g. Are important features only accessible by right-clicking on a menu header, on a text box, or on an unusual GUI element?) o Are there hints and tips and shortcuts that appear as the user is using the software? o Should there be instructions in the manual that actually belong as contextual tips shown in the program? o Is the user at a disadvantage for not knowing certain keyboard shortcuts? A user has the right to know all major and minor keyboard shortcuts and features of an application. o Is the learning curve (of hints and tips) skewed towards point-and-click users rather than keyboard users? o Are there any "hidden" or undocumented keyboard shortcuts, that would better be revealed in a "Keyboard Shortcuts" Help-Menu item? A strategy to prevent this "undocumented feature disconnect" is to automatically generate a list of keyboard shortcuts from their definitions in the code. 95
Page 1:
] NATIONAL OPEN UNIVERSITY OF NIGER
Page 4 and 5:
National Open University of Nigeria
Page 6 and 7:
Summary ...........................
Page 8 and 9:
UNIT 3 - GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE (
Page 10 and 11:
Assignments File Tutor-Marked Assig
Page 12 and 13:
2 DESIGN and DESIGNING GOOD USER IN
Page 14 and 15:
need both the study unit you are wo
Page 16 and 17:
CIT 711: USER INTERFACE DESIGN AND
Page 18 and 19:
UNIT 1 FUNDAMENTALS OF USER INTERFA
Page 20 and 21:
3.3 TYPES OF USER INTERFACES Curren
Page 22 and 23:
3.5 USER INTERFACE MODALITIES AND M
Page 24 and 25:
Table of Contents 1.0 Introduction
Page 26 and 27:
3.1.1 DESIGNING A GOOD USER INTERFA
Page 28 and 29:
widgets properly is to read and und
Page 30 and 31:
Figure 1:- Showing that alignment o
Page 32 and 33:
6.0 TUTOR MARKED ASSIGNMENT a. How
Page 34 and 35:
A graphical user interface is a typ
Page 36 and 37:
Operating System. It is easy for a
Page 38 and 39:
A list of items from which to selec
Page 40 and 41:
collaborative work. For example, sc
Page 42 and 43:
MODULE 1 UNIT 4 HUMAN COMPUTER INTE
Page 44 and 45: 3.3 DIFFERNCES WITH RELATED FIELDS
Page 46 and 47: window blinds to automobile braking
Page 48 and 49: Wickens, Christopher D., John D. Le
Page 50 and 51: The International Ergonomics Associ
Page 52 and 53: approach, the Gilbreths reduced the
Page 54 and 55: 3.6 BENEFITS OF ERGONOMICS The thre
Page 56 and 57: Another key to reducing lumbar disc
Page 58 and 59: MODULE 2 - USER INTERFACE DESIGN TE
Page 60 and 61: methods include inspection methods,
Page 62 and 63: Determine time of each operation (b
Page 64 and 65: unable to understand new informatio
Page 66 and 67: M cones, or, misleadingly, green co
Page 68 and 69: Motor skill which is a learned seri
Page 70 and 71: MODULE 2 UNIT 2 UNDERSTANDING USERS
Page 72 and 73: The users of a system must be ident
Page 74 and 75: This example brings up an important
Page 76 and 77: whether you want to have a palette
Page 78 and 79: Task analysis which includes identi
Page 80 and 81: MODULE 2 UNIT 3 USER CENTERED DESIG
Page 82 and 83: or small body text is also hard to
Page 84 and 85: Introduction to User-centered desig
Page 86 and 87: organizations themselves. Interacti
Page 88 and 89: After thorough analysis using vario
Page 90 and 91: Interaction design which is the dis
Page 92 and 93: In human-computer interaction and c
Page 96 and 97: 3.4 ISO STANDARDS FOR USABILITY ISO
Page 98 and 99: In this unit, you have been introdu
Page 100 and 101: affect the way the command is execu
Page 102 and 103: • Guides the user via the predefi
Page 104 and 105: The term direct manipulation was in
Page 106 and 107: There are two important reasons for
Page 108 and 109: 108
Page 110 and 111: UNIT 1 PROTOTYPING Table of Content
Page 112 and 113: Figure 12: The iterative steps of p
Page 114 and 115: select print Figure 13: An interfac
Page 116 and 117: Ambler, S.W. & Constantine, L.L. (2
Page 118 and 119: 3.2 LOW-FIDELITY PROTOTYPES Low-fid
Page 120 and 121: Figure 14:- Example of Sketching II
Page 122 and 123: Much more important for features th
Page 124 and 125: DENIM, an extension of SILK, is a t
Page 126 and 127: • Encourage menu & forms style, r
Page 128 and 129: Another problem is that native widg
Page 130 and 131: interfaces, so that a realistic sim
Page 132 and 133: UNIT 3 INPUT AND OUTPUT MODELS Tabl
Page 134 and 135: Recall that perceptual fusion means
Page 136 and 137: 3.2 OUTPUT MODEL There are basicall
Page 138 and 139: directly-mapped pixel image will no
Page 140 and 141: Most stroke models also include som
Page 142 and 143: UNIT 4 MODEL VIEW-CONTROLLER (MVC)
Page 144 and 145:
3.3.2 AS A DESIGN PATTERN MVC enco
Page 146 and 147:
The Views are XForms controls for s
Page 148 and 149:
UNIT 5 LAYOUTS AND CONSTRAINTS Tabl
Page 150 and 151:
3.5 CONSTRAINTS Constraints are rel
Page 152 and 153:
152
Page 154 and 155:
MODULE 4 UNIT 1 TECHNIQUES FOR EVAL
Page 156 and 157:
a. Card Sorting Card sorting is a w
Page 158 and 159:
Rapid prototyping is a method used
Page 160 and 161:
3.2.1 THE USE OF PROTOTYPES It is o
Page 162 and 163:
Dumas, J.S. and Redish, J.C. (1999)
Page 164 and 165:
the users' respect for you as a pro
Page 166 and 167:
the users will be and what kind of
Page 168 and 169:
speed whenever the average load was
Page 170 and 171:
Table 4:- Table: Average times for
Page 172 and 173:
phases: list the actions, and then
Page 174 and 175:
Nielsen and Molich used their own e
Page 176 and 177:
7.0 REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING
Page 178 and 179:
users. If you do not, you can be ba
Page 180 and 181:
If you are led to develop more and
Page 182 and 183:
It's very easy to shape the comment
Page 184 and 185:
a. Analyzing the Bottom-Line Number
Page 186 and 187:
you use. But then you need some way
Page 188 and 189:
ecruit test users with more similar
Page 190 and 191:
MODULE 4 UNIT 4 OTHER EVALUATION IS
Page 192 and 193:
3.2 CURRENT ISSUES CONCERNING EVALU
Page 194 and 195:
2.0 OBJECTIVES By the end this unit
Page 196 and 197:
It provides a real focal point for
Page 198 and 199:
3.3.4 CONDUCTING THE TEST Having co
Page 200:
The stages involved in usability te
show all

User Interface Design and Ergonomics - National Open University of ...

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?