From the Publisher:
Written by the author of the best-selling HyperText & HyperMedia, this book provides an excellent guide to the methods of usability engineering. Special features: emphasizes cost-effective methods that will help developers improve their user interfaces immediately, shows you how to avoid the four most frequently listed reasons for delay in software projects, provides step-by-step information about which methods to use at various stages during the development life cycle, and offers information on the unique issues relating to informational usability. You do not need to have previous knowledge of usability to implement the methods provided, yet all of the latest research is covered.

Usability Engineering

Online shopping provides convenience to Web shoppers, yet its electronic format changes information-gathering methods traditionally used by customers. This change raises questions concerning customer satisfaction with the online purchasing process. Web shopping involves a number of phases, including the information phase, in which customers search for information regarding their intended purchases. The purpose of this paper is to develop theoretically justifiable constructs for measuring Web-customer satisfaction during the information phase.By synthesizing the expectation-disconfirmation paradigm with empirical theories in user satisfaction, we separate Web site quality into information quality (IQ) and system quality (SQ), and propose nine key constructs for Web-customer satisfaction. The measurements for these constructs are developed and tested in a two-phase study. In the first phase, the IQ and SQ dimensions are identified, and instruments for measuring them are developed and tested. In the second phase, using the salient dimensions of Web-IQ and Web-SQ as the basis for formulating first-order factors, we develop and empirically test instruments for measuring IQ and SQ-satisfaction. Moreover, this phase involves the design and test of second-order factors for measuring Web-customer expectations, disconfirmation, and perceived performance regarding IQ and SQ. The analysis of the measurement model indicates that the proposed metrics have a relatively high degree of validity and reliability. The results of the study provide reliable instruments for operationalizing the key constructs in the analysis of Web-customer satisfaction within the expectation-disconfirmation paradigm.

The Measurement of Web-Customer Satisfaction: An Expectation and Disconfirmation Approach

While empirical studies in software engineering are beginning to gain recognition in the research community, this subarea is also entering a new level of maturity by beginning to address the human aspects of software development. This added focus has added a new layer of complexity to an already challenging area of research. Along with new research questions, new research methods are needed to study nontechnical aspects of software engineering. In many other disciplines, qualitative research methods have been developed and are commonly used to handle the complexity of issues involving human behaviour. The paper presents several qualitative methods for data collection and analysis and describes them in terms of how they might be incorporated into empirical studies of software engineering, in particular how they might be combined with quantitative methods. To illustrate this use of qualitative methods, examples from real software engineering studies are used throughout.

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Qualitative methods in empirical studies of software engineering

Usability Engineering: Scenario-Based Development of Human-Computer Interaction is a radical departure from traditional books that emphasize theory and address experts. This book focuses on the realities of product development, showing how user interaction scenarios can make usability practices an integral part of interactive system development. As you'll learn, usability engineering is not the application of inflexible rules; it's a process of analysis, prototyping, and problem solving in which you evaluate tradeoffs, make reasoned decisions, and maximize the overall value of your product.

Usability Engineering: Scenario-Based Development of Human-Computer Interaction

This paper notes the importance of usable systems and promotes the process of human-centred design as a way to achieve them. Adopting the framework of ISO 13407, each of the main processes in the human-centred design cycle is considered in turn along with a set of usability methods to support it. These methods are briefly described with references to further information. Each set of methods is also presented in a table format to enable the reader to compare and select them for different design situations.

Methods to support human-centred design

From the Publisher:
In A Practical Guide to Usability Testing, the authors begin by defining usability, advocating and explaining the methods of usability engineering and reviewing many techniques for assessing and assuring usability throughout the development process. They then take you through all the steps in planning and conducting a usability test, analyzing data, and using the results to improve both products and processes. Written in plain English and filled with examples from many types of products and tests, A Practical Guide to Usability Testing discusses the full range of testing options from quick studies with a few subjects to more formal tests with carefully designed controls. The authors discuss the place of usability laboratories in testing as well as the skills you need to conduct a test. Included are forms that you can use or modify to conduct a usability test and layouts of existing labs that will help you build your own. The authors, a human factors psychologist and a linguist, have extensive experience conducting research on usability, doing usability testing, helping companies set up usability labs and programs, and teaching usability engineering and testing.

A Practical Guide to Usability Testing

Preface. About the book. Acknowledgments. Chapter 1: Introducing User and Task Analysis for Interface Design. PART 1: UNDERSTANDING THE CONTEXT OF USER AND TASK ANALYSIS. Chapter 2: Thinking about Users. Chapter 3: Thinking about Tasks. Chapter 4: Thinking about the Users' Environment. Chapter 5: Making the Business Case for Site Visits. PART 2: GETTING READY FOR SITE VISITS. Chapter 6: Selecting Techniques. Chapter 7: Setting Up Site Visits. Chapter 8: Preparing for the Site Visits. PART 3: CONDUCTING THE SITE VISIT. Chapter 9: Conducting the Site Visit-Honing Your Observation Skills. Chapter 10: Conducting the Site Visit-Honing Your Interviewing Skills. PART 4: MAKING THE TRANSITION FROM ANALYSIS TO DESIGN. Chapter 11: Analyzing and Presenting the Data You Have Collected. Chapter 12: Working Toward the Interface Design. Chapter 13: Prototyping the Interface Design. Chapter 14: User and Task Analysis for Documentation and Training. Bibliography. Appendix A: Template for a Site Visit Plan. Appendix B: Resources. Appendix C: Guidelines for User-Interface Design. Index.

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User and task analysis for interface design

Guidelines for Accessible---and Usable---Web Sites: Observing Users Who Work With Screenreaders

Bridging the gap: between accessibility and usability

A literature review reveals many technical weaknesses of readability formulas (when compared to direct usability testing with typical readers): they were developed for children s school books, not adult technical documentation;they ignore between-reader differences and the effects of content, layout, and retrieval aids on text usefulness; they emphasize countable features at the expense of more subtle contributors to text comprehension.

Janice (Ginny) Redish

Papers

A Practical Guide to Usability Testing

User and task analysis for interface design

Bridging the gap: between accessibility and usability

Readability formulas have even more limitations than Klare discusses

Place of readability formulas in technical communication.