Pros and Cons of Co-participation in Usability Studies

Co-participation (also known as co-discovery) is a usability evaluation technique where two participants are paired in a usability test and work collaboratively on tasks. They are often asked to think aloud while working together. I've used co-participation for both hardware and software tests and have also used the more traditional one-person-at-a-time technique.

Wilson, Chauncey E. Usability Interface (1998). Articles>Usability

Publishing Newsletters on Paper or Online: A Profile of How Three Chapter Editors Did It

The switch to web delivery meant that we no longer had to restrict the newsletter to black and white, and we were no longer limited to four pages (a folio) or a multiple of four pages. An end to the cost constraints imposed by printing also allowed more creative formatting and the use of color.

Wilson, Scott. Usability Interface (2003). Articles>Publishing>Online>Newsletters

The Pulse of the Usability Community: Transformation and UUX

When you renew your STC membership, be sure to select STC Usability and User Experience (UUX) as one of your communities.

Bachmann, Karen L. Usability Interface (2005). Articles>Usability>Community Building>STC

Pulse of the Usability SIG: Signs of Spring?

The mood on the usability e-lists is somber. At the WinWriters conference in February, every hand in the audience went up when we were asked if we knew someone who was out of work. Successive rounds of budget cuts and layoffs mean that even those who are still employed are on tenterhooks, or working even harder to fill the gaps. On list recently, posts were predicting even harder times ahead and worrying about whether it was time for usability practitioners to look for alternate careers.

Quesenbery, Whitney. Usability Interface (2002). Careers>Usability

Quality, Usability, and the Ontological Argument for the Existence of God

I’ve been involved with the usability movement for about five years. It’s occurred to me more than once: what’s the difference between 'usable' software and just plain 'software that works the way it’s supposed to?' The answer—for both quality and usability, I believe—hinges on the meaning of 'works the way it’s supposed to.' Once, processes just evolved. They were changed sometimes, but they were never systematically evaluated. Having standards applied made them quality processes.

Marion, Craig. Usability Interface (2000). Articles>Usability

A Question of Process

When we consider the right questions to ask in usability, we first think of the questions we should ask our users and stakeholders. This line of questioning is a necessary part of our jobs. However, I have seen few articles outside of the ROI of usability discussions where usability professionals ask questions about the usability of our own processes and approaches.

Bachmann, Karen L. Usability Interface (2005). Articles>Usability>Planning

Read the Instructions

My father taught me valuable lessons that I will never forget. He taught me how to maintain the family car, how to fix household appliances, and how to use garden equipment. Although would show me how to perform the task, he would stress that I read the instructions. His philosophy was based on the belief that instructions are written to teach and to prevent mistakes. What does this have to do with usability?

Dick, David J. Usability Interface. Articles>Documentation

Reader's Questions: Severity Scales

It is important for the Usability Engineer to attend meetings where development and product managers review bugs, decide if the severity is appropriate, and choose which bugs will be fixed. I've been able to convince development and product management to consider some usability bugs as critical bugs.

Wilson, Chauncey E. Usability Interface (1999). Design>Usability>Assessment

Recipe for Designing Usable Documentation

What makes documentation usable? Usable documentation accommodates the way I think. Hart summarizes his principles for define 'user-friendly documentation.'

Hart, Geoffrey J.S. Usability Interface (2006). Articles>Documentation>Usability

Remote Usability Testing Tools

Participants ask questions live (via a phone connection, audio via Internet, or typed chat session). There are some usability testing products (such as ErgoLight) that enable you to test remotely when you cannot make an online connection, but they are not covered in this survey. These products are classified as Remote Control, Support Desk/Customer Service, Telecommuting, System Administration, and Video Chat tools. Many of the products have a Recorder and/or Playback facility, which is probably a natural extension of remote viewing.

Preston, Alice. Usability Interface (1999). Articles>Usability>Methods>Software

Report on the Seminar Understanding Web Readers (and Non-Readers): Creating Usable and Effective Web Content

A report on a presentation by Ginny Redish where she discussed how research from linguistics, as well as cognitive psychology, reading studies, writing studies, and other disciplines could contribute to useful and usable Web sites.

McDaniel, Scott M. Usability Interface (2006). Articles>Web Design>Usability

Review: Reshaping Technical Communication: New Directions and Challenges for the 21st Century

Reshaping Technical Communication: New Directions and Challenges for the 21st Century by Barbara Mirel and Rachel Spilka, eds. offers great insights that might help you gain an understanding of how each world operates, why they operate as they do, and how the two worlds affect and can alter the future of technical communication.

Staples, Jeff. Usability Interface (2003). Resources>Reviews>TC

Results of the Usability SIG Member Survey

The first Usability SIG survey was conducted in 1996. I thought that 2003 was an ideal opportunity to survey our members again. Due to cost constraints, the survey was only available for 30 days. Of the 1600 members, 85 responded to the survey. That might be considered a low response, but statistics show that a response rate of over 5% is considered good. Yes, we read every reply. The Usability SIG team reviewed the results and have a strategy to make improvements. The following are samples of the responses received.

Dick, David J. Usability Interface (2003). Articles>Usability>Statistics>STC

Results on a Study of Usability Testing

A study I conducted as part of my graduate work at the University of Houston shows that technical communicators find many benefits in usability testing of documentation but cannot quantify them. The study’s purpose was to identify an exact return on investment figure that could be used to convince otherwise unwilling management to initiate usability studies. While the data failed to produce such a figure, impact analysis indicated that the return on investment is probably high.

Ostrander, Elaine. Usability Interface (2000). Articles>Usability>Assessment

Review: Review of Reshaping Technical Communication: New Directions and Challenges for the 21st Century

Ever wonder about the relationship between academia and the corporate world? Or, maybe if you are on the corporate side (as I am), have you wondered why academia operates as it does? (And vice versa.) If so, Reshaping technical communication: New directions and challenges for the 21st century offers great insights that might help you gain an understanding of how each world operates, why they operate as they do, and how the two worlds affect and can alter the future of technical communication.

Staples, Jeff. Usability Interface (2003). Articles>Reviews>TC

The Role of Online Surveys in the Usability Assessment Process

I have attended several conferences at which I witnessed a growing debate over the role of survey work in the field of usability. Some practitioners are of the opinion that 'usability is usability' and 'surveys are surveys', and only rarely do the two meet in a harmonious exchange. The more I have considered this viewpoint, the more convinced I am that it is probably valid, unless the usability specialist takes the lead in assimilating survey output into the process of evaluating the overall effectiveness of Web sites and online applications.

MacElroy, William. Usability Interface (2003). Design>Usability>Methods>Surveys

The Search for Well-Defined Usability Discipline

The message about usability is reaching general audiences. However, sometimes the message is garbled and sometimes it is overlooked entirely.

Bachmann, Karen L. Usability Interface (2003). Articles>Usability>Professionalism

Secondary Windows in Online Help - What Do Users Really Make of Them?

Digitext, a UK-based consultancy specializing in online information, has recently conducted two different usability tests, each of which sheds new light on the way in which people respond to secondary windows in online Help. The overall conclusions from the two tests were: there is little reason to assign specific types of topic to different secondary windows; it can be helpful to use a secondary window for a link to a sub-procedure or layer of additional detail, as long as the current window remains visible on screen when the new window appears. This article explains how the tests led to these findings.

Ellison, Matthew. Usability Interface (2001). Articles>Documentation>Help

Section 508 from the Hearing Loss Perspective

Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, as amended in 1998, requires federal departments and agencies, including the United States Postal Service, to comply with accessibility requirements when procuring, developing, using or maintaining electronic and information technology (E&IT), unless doing so causes an undue burden (significant difficulty or expense). E&IT with accessibility requirements pertinent to people with hearing disabilities include: telephones; televisions; videotapes and DVDs; multimedia web sites; interactive voice response systems, and information kiosks. Where steps and physical barriers kept people with physical disabilities out of the workforce and out of government buildings three decades ago, videos and web pages without captioning; telephones without amplification; interactive voice response systems that do not support TTY signals; phone configurations that do not support VCO (voice carry over); and phone systems with no TTY jacks are examples of barriers today. Congress identified the federal government as the proper place to begin tackling these problems. Through the Section 508 amendment, the federal government has been given the responsibility to set an example for the rest of the country by being a model employer and providing exemplary service to its customers with disabilities by showing that access can be achieved in a reasonable way and that information technology access will benefit all people. The Section 508 statute directed the U.S. Access Board to develop access standards for this technology. The process began with a report presented to the board by an advisory committee it convened and ended with the 508 Standards being incorporated in their entirety into the federal procurement regulations.

Baquis, David. Usability Interface (2003). Design>Web Design>Accessibility>Section 508

SIGs: A Good Investment

In a recent discussion on TECHWR-L, an e-mail discussion list for technical communicators (not affiliated with STC) several posters debated whether STC SIGs are worth the $5 per SIG assessment the Society instituted a few years ago for SIG membership. Some writers noted that they didn’t see any value returned from the SIGs that they belonged to, while others believed that their experience had been quite different. I belong to seven STC SIGs. Admittedly, some provide more value for the dollar than others (at least in terms of tangible benefits such as newsletters and listserve activity), but all of them have been well worth the investment. I’d like to offer a few observations based on my experience as a SIG member as well as four years on the STC’s board of directors and two years on the SIG advisory committee in the early 90s.

Hayhoe, George F. Usability Interface (2000). Articles>Usability

Six Tips to Ensure a Successful Usability Test

Success in usability testing is learning what you need to know. That includes finding out both what is working well and what is not working well. Focusing on formative tests—with an eye toward identifying problems and bringing the issues to the team—is the secret to successful usability testing.

Redish, Janice C. 'Ginny'. Usability Interface (2005). Articles>Usability>Testing

Sneak Preview of the Usability and Information Design Stem at the 51st Annual STC Conference

Here is a preview of the Usability and Information Design (UID) stem of the 2004 STC International Conference. You can also find the full stem in a spreadsheet that you can download (Excel format).

Jarrett, Caroline. Usability Interface (2004). Articles>Usability

Social or Philosophical Issues Related to the Design and Delivery of User Assistance

User assistance is defined as a form of assistance that is provided to users of products to help them use the products more easily and efficiently. In the Information Technology industry, a product is a software product/application that users use to perform specific business functions. Users of these products/applications use them differently, based on their social and philosophical environment, their cultural context, their learnability and a number of other factors. While the same user assistance must necessarily be designed and delivered to the users of a product, because all users use a particular product/application to perform similar tasks, user assistance can be designed and delivered differently to users, based on their social and philosophical environment. This could enable users from diverse social and philosophical backgrounds use the same products/applications more effectively.

Das, Pradipto. Usability Interface (2007). Articles>Documentation>Usability>Help

Stuckness and Low Vision: How Technology and Socratic Classroom Dialogue Changed my Life

Gloria discusses her low-vision condition, the problems it poses in her life and work and the accommodation strategies she has developed.

Reece, Gloria A. Usability Interface (2003). Design>Usability>Accessibility>Visual

Surrogate Tests: When You Can't Get to Your Users

I recently used this strategy to test an online help database I was building in Lotus Notes. The system that I am documenting is a suite of Lotus Notes programs that allow organizations to apply to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for grant funds. The system helps a user create and track application materials, forward them to others for review, and eventually submit them. EPA uses the system to create and process award documents based on the applications. Both the applicant users and EPA users are all over the country, and though my management approved the usability testing, they did not allocate money for site visits or equipment.

McDaniel, Scott M. Usability Interface (1999). Articles>Usability