Usability Engineering - Methods and Tools

Methods and Tools

Usability Engineers conduct usability evaluations of existing or proposed interfaces and their findings are fed back to the Designer for use in design or redesign. Common usability evaluation methods include:

• usability testing (Gold standard of Usability Engineering, but the most involved and expensive method)
• interviews
• focus groups
• questionnaires/surveys
• cognitive walkthroughs
• heuristic evaluations
• RITE method
• cognitive task analysis
• contextual inquiry
• Think aloud protocol

Usability testing, the gold standard, is when participants are recruited and asked to use the actual or prototype interface and their reactions, behaviors, errors, and self-reports in interviews are carefully observed and recorded by the Usability Engineer. On the basis of this data, the Usability Engineer recommends interface changes to improve usability.

There are a variety of online resources that make the job of the Usability Engineer a little easier. Some examples of these include:
1. The Web Metrics Tool Suite is a product of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. This toolkit is focused on evaluating the HTML of a website versus a wide range of usability guidelines and includes:

• Web Static Analyzer Tool (WebSAT) - checks web page HTML against typical usability guidelines
• Web Category Analysis Tool (WebCAT) - lets the usability engineer construct and conduct a web category analysis
• Web Variable Instrumenter Program (WebVIP) - instruments a website to capture a log of user interaction
• Framework for Logging Usability Data (FLUD) - a file format and parser for representation of user interaction logs
• FLUDViz Tool - produces a 2D visualization of a single user session
• VisVIP Tool - produces a 3D visualization of user navigation paths through a website
• TreeDec - adds navigation aids to the pages of a website

2. The Usability Testing Environment (UTE) produced by Mind Design Systems is available freely to federal government employees. According to the official company website this tool

consists of two tightly-integrated applications. The first is the UTE Manager, which helps a tester set up test scenarios (tasks) as well as survey and demographic questions. The UTE Manager also compiles the test results and produces customized reports and summary data, which can be used as quantitative measures of usability observations and recommendations. The second UTE application is the UTE Runner. The UTE Runner presents the test participants with the test scenarios (tasks) as well as any demographic and survey questions. In addition, the UTE Runner tracks the actions of the subject throughout the test including clicks, keystrokes, and scrolling.

3. The UsableNet Liftmachine is a product of UsableNet.com and implements the section 508 Usability and Accessibility guidelines as well as the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative Guidelines.

It is important to remember that online tools are only a useful tool, and do not substitute for a complete Usability Engineering analysis.