Welcome to COMP5427
Usability Engineering
Judy Kay (co-ordinator)
Bob Kummerfeld
OHS INDUCTION
School of Information Technologies
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• Check for any sign of immediate danger
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• Do not use lifts
Emergency contact numbers
• Dial 0-000 (from internal phone) and University Security on 9351-3333.
• First aid kit available in kitchen area adjacent to Lab 110 in SIT Building.
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Use of Labs
• Keep work area clean and orderly
• Remove trip hazards around desk area
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WHS Contacts for School of IT
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First aid officer in SIT Building is Will Calleja (1West) 9036 9706
Chief fire warden in SIT Building is Greg Ryan (1 East) 9351 4360
Nearest medical facility – University Health Service in Level 3, Wentworth Building
Report incidents to:
Katie Yang (Undergraduate), 9351 4918
Cecille Faraizi (Postgraduate), 9351 6060
Shari Lee (School Manager), 9351 4158
Pragmatics
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http://comp5427.usydhci.info/
Labs start week 2
Short tour:
Notes:
– Course schedule cumulative
– Weekly homework presented in lectures
– Readings (balanced to fit other work and topics)
The teaching team
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Judy Kay
– Computer Human Adapted Interaction Group
– Research: personalisation, surface computing, technology for
education, lifelong learning, health and wellness
– Room 307, School of IT Building, J12
– Phone: 9351-4502
– http://sydney.edu.au/engineering/it/~judy/
– http://sydney.edu.au/engineering/people/judy.kay.php
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Bob Kummerfeld
– Computer Human Adapted Interaction Group
– Research: architectures for user modelling and pervasive computing
systems
– Room 310, School of IT Building, J12
– Phone: 9351-4777
– http://sydney.edu.au/engineering/it/~bob/
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Thushan Ganegedara
– PhD student
– thushv@gmail.com>
Some examples of our research
• http://www.cruiserinteractive.com.au/clientcase-studies?id=2
• http://www.cruiserinteractive.com.au/clientcase-studies?id=4
• http://www.cruiserinteractive.com.au/clientcase-studies?id=7
• http://chai.it.usyd.edu.au/Projects/DataMinin
gForTabletop
Textbook
• Hartson and Pyla
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Designer perspective
Extensive search….
Big book but don’t fear….
Electronic?
Best experience so far on ipad - DL Reader, also tried Bluefire  web version
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• Very long and wordy
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Do not fear!
Reduces cross referencing
More useful as reference
We focus on HCI broader view (cf. Usability Engineering)
• Focus on required readings
• About the textbook
• We will also use other readings for depth in the various forms of usability
engineering
Class activity
What do you expect to learn in this subject?
What would you like to learn in this subject and why?
What are the most relevant skills you bring to this
subject?
Why does all this matter?
What is usability?
What is usability?
• “Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish
basic tasks the first time they encounter the design?
• Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how
quickly can they perform tasks?
• Memorability: When users return to the design after a
period of not using it, how easily can they reestablish
proficiency?
• Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe
are these errors, and how easily can they recover from
the errors?
• Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design?”
Usability 101: Introduction to Usability
by Jakob Nielsen on January 4, 2012
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-101-introduction-to-usability/
Utility
• Usability and utility are equally important and together determine
whether something is useful”
– Easy but useless?
– Hard, but potentially valuable?
• “Definition: Utility = whether it provides the features you need.
• Definition: Usability = how easy & pleasant these features are to
use.
• Definition: Useful = usability + utility.”
Usability 101: Introduction to Usability
by Jakob Nielsen on January 4, 2012
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-101-introduction-to-usability/
User “Experience” (UX)
• Even more than “usability”
– Usability focuses on performance
• User Experience
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Emotion, Heritage
Fun, Style, Art
Branding, Reputation
Political, social personal connections
Beyond just the device itself – “Service Design”
• Blends: usability engineering, software engineering,
ergonomics, hardware engineering, marketing, graphic
design
© 2013 - Brad Myers
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User experience goals
Desirable aspects
satisfying
helpful
fun
enjoyable
motivating
provocative
engaging
challenging
surprising
pleasurable
enhancing sociability rewarding
exciting
supporting creativity emotionally fulfilling
entertaining
cognitively stimulating
Undesirable aspects
boring
unpleasant
frustrating
patronizing
making one feel guiltymaking one feel stupid
annoying
cutesy
childish
gimmicky
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www.id-book.com
Usability engineering….
• Systematic ways to tackle the task of creating usable
interfaces
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Methods
Theory
How to apply them
A process (p49 H&P)
A checklist (in the hands of an expert)
• Builds upon science
– Research studies
– Psychology
• Builds upon practitioner research and experience
Some Usability Methods
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Contextual Inquiry
Contextual Analysis (Design)
Paper prototypes
Think-aloud protocols
Heuristic Evaluation
Affinity diagrams (WAAD)
Personas
Wizard of Oz
Task analysis
Cognitive Walkthrough
KLM and GOMS (CogTool)
Video prototyping
Body storming
Expert interviews
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A vs. B studies
Questionnaires
Surveys
Interaction Relabeling
Log analysis
Focus groups
Card sorting
Diary studies
Improvisation
Use cases
Scenarios
Cognitive Dimensions
“Speed Dating”
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© 2013 - Brad Myers
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And yet this is also
• Command line
– Do you use this much?
– If so why, or why not?
• WIMP
– What is this?
• NUI
– What is it?
Command line …. NUI
How deeply different are these?
What are the implications for the world
you will encounter/create?
For usability engineering?
User experience vs. usability
• The text treats user experience as additional
to usability
– Usability still essential
– It treats usability is part of user experience
– Usability is pragmatic component
– H&P aims to provide a broad foundation for all of
these aspects
– We will consider all the them, but focus on classic
usability
What makes it hard to create usable
interfaces that provide a delightful
user experience?
It is hard to think like the users
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May need to understand the domain
And the context of use
And what the user knows
And what they have experienced
And how they will interpret the interface
elements, what they will “see”
Specifications are always wrong
"Only slightly more than 30% of the code
developed in application software
development ever gets used as intended by
end-users. The reason for this statistic may be
a result of developers not understanding what
their users need."
-- Hugh Beyer and Karen Holtzblatt, "Contextual Design: A
Customer-Centric Approach to Systems Design,“
ACM Interactions, Sep+Oct, 1997, iv.5, p. 62.
© 2013 - Brad Myers
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More reasons why it is difficult….
• Tasks and domains are complex
– Word 1 (100 commands) vs. Word 2013 (>2000)
– MacDraw 1 vs. Illustrator
– BMW iDrive adjusts over 700 functions
• Existing theories and guidelines are not sufficient
– Too specific and/or too general
– Standard does not address all issues.
• Adding graphics can make worse
– Pretty  Easy to use
• Can’t just copy other designs
– Legal issues
© 2013 - Brad Myers
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More reasons why it is difficult….
• All UI design involves tradeoffs:
– Standards (style guides, related products)
– Graphic design (artistic)
– Technical writing (Documentation)
– Internationalization
– Performance
– Multiple platforms (hardware, browsers, etc.)
– High-level and low-level details
– External factors (social issues)
– Legal issues
– Time to develop and test (“time to market”)
© 2013 - Brad Myers
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Summary so far
• Defining usability
• And usability engineering
• And aspects the text treats as additional to
usability
• Reasons it is hard to design usable interfaces
The assignment
This will run through the first half of the
semester inspiring and driving the learning
Electronic text books, and other e-books, have the potential
to provide a very valuable way for people to learn.
We will study the usability of e-books, with a particular focus
on the class text.
Live demonstration of online text
Hartson and Pyla, The UX Book: Process and
Guidelines for Ensuring a Quality User
Experience. Elsevier, 2012.
http://opac.library.usyd.edu.au/record=b44150
45~S4
Preliminary class activity
• What are the particular potential advantages
of an e-textbook?
• What are the particular potential
disadvantages?
• What are the “tasks” that a person needs to
do when then use an e-textbook?
Homework
• Auto-ethnography:
– Identify 3 important tasks you want to be able to do when you read an etextbook. Use a post-it note to write each task
– Read the parts of the class text, using an electronic version of the book
– Try to do the tasks above
– Write a set of post-it notes about the experience: what went well, not so well,
delightful….
• First step into more typical ethnography:
– Ask a friend to repeat these three tasks (on just a small part of the text)
– Record this too (put the details on a set of post-its, put
•  on ones that matched your experience,
• # for ones that did not
• Write a draft concept statement for an e-textbook interface (see next
slide)
• Bring all the above to the next class
System Concept Statement (H&P:96-7)
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100 – 150 words
Mission statement for the system
Needs care and we will refine it during the next class
See example in the text
– Important for this stage and because we will refer to this
example through the semester
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System name
Target users
What the system is intended to do
The problems the system should solve
Aspects of the user experience
Overview of the approach
H&P Chapter 2: The Wheel
2.2,pp53-5
H&P Chapter 2,
p53
H&P Chapter 2,
p54
Mapping project parameters to
process choices
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Copyright MKP.
All rights2, p63
H&P Chapter
reserved.
The system complexity space
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Copyright MKP.
All rights2, p65
H&P Chapter
reserved.
H&P Chapter 2, p6734
Key outcomes – answers to:
• What is usability?
• What else matters?
• What is usability engineering?
– Design versus science versus engineering
• What are the four key elements? Who are the professionals who
focus on each?
• Why is it hard to create usable interaction?
• The iterative processes to address this to engineer usable systems:
– Why the processes are needed?
– How heavy weight, according to the complexity?
– Who does which parts
• The challenge of seeing the process in terms of the users…..
What is usability engineering?
Hartson and Pyla:
1.3: From usability to user experience
1.3.1-5, pp 9-12,
1.3.9 pp 19-21
Readings
Getting to the science you need to
know
And the processes for doing HCI science
that links with engineering
Reading for Week 2: Usable security
• Akhawe, D., & Felt, A. P. (2013, August). Alice in
Warningland: A Large-Scale Field Study of
Browser Security Warning Effectiveness. In Usenix
Security (pp. 257-272).
• What to do for next week:
– Read the paper
– Download CMapTools http://cmap.ihmc.us/
– Create a concept map that makes use of ~20 of the
most important concepts
– Bring your map to class
– [Be ready to store it on your group’s BitBucket site]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concept_map
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concept_map
Homework summary
• Auto-ethnography
• More authentic ethnography
• Bring post-its
– Tasks
– Your own experiences
– Others’
• Reading on usable security