Do you need general principles or concrete heuristics?

Cronholm, Stefan; Bruno, Vince

doi:10.1145/1517744.1517779

Cited by 8 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…This suggests that usability is not very important in BI. Cronholm [11] however states that the complex, high-pressure environment of modern business makes BI usability essential as the business analysts have little time to learn the interface to what is essentially a complex environment. Gulliksen [23] argues for a usability specialist with experience and expertise of HCI in general and user-centred design, as well as basic mastery of the technology, processes, methods and tools used in systems development and finally knowledge of the application domain.…”

Section: Usability In Business Intelligencementioning

confidence: 99%

Usability evaluation guidelines for business intelligence applications

Jooste

Biljon

Mentz

2013

Proceedings of the South African Institute for Computer Scientists and Information Technologists Conference

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Business Intelligence (BI) applications provide business information and drive decision support. To derive maximum benefit from BI applications, the applications need to be used optimally. Optimal use depends on various factors including the usability of the product. The documented need for BI usability research together with the practical need for BI evaluation guidelines provides the rationale for this study. The purpose of the study was to investigate the usability evaluation of BI applications in the context of a coal mining organisation. In a mining environment companies need to derive maximum benefit from BI applications, therefore these applications need to be used optimally and that places the focus on usability. The research is guided by the question: What criteria should be used to evaluate the usability of BI applications. The research design included user observation, heuristic evaluation and a survey. Based on observations made during user support on a BI application used at a coal mining organisation a log of usability issues was compiled. The usability criteria extracted from this log was compared and contrasted with general usability criteria from literature to synthesize an initial set of BI usability evaluation criteria. These criteria were used as the basis for a heuristic evaluation of the BI application used at the coal mining organisation. The same BI application was also evaluated using the Software Usability Measurement Inventory (SUMI) standardised questionnaire. The results from the two evaluations were triangulated to provide a validated and refined set of criteria. The main contribution of the study is the usability evaluation criteria for BI applications presented as guidelines. These guidelines deviate from existing evaluation guidelines in the emphasis on information architecture, data quality and learnability.

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Section: Usability In Business Intelligencementioning

confidence: 99%

Usability evaluation guidelines for business intelligence applications

Jooste

Biljon

Mentz

2013

Proceedings of the South African Institute for Computer Scientists and Information Technologists Conference

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“…This highlights the importance of applying usability principles to the design of BI application interfaces. The modern business environment is characterized by complexity and high pressure to perform, this impacts negatively on the business analyst's ability to master the BI application interface [44]. Therefore the usability of the BI application is essential to business performance.…”

Section: Usability In Business Intelligencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many of the existing general usability criteria lists are oriented towards the design of the interface instead of assisting the performance of business activities [44]. It is therefore critical to build up sufficient knowledge and understanding of the context of use (the working environment) and this requires user involvement [9].…”

Section: Usability In Business Intelligencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is therefore critical to build up sufficient knowledge and understanding of the context of use (the working environment) and this requires user involvement [9]. The fact that BI usability has not been adequately researched [7] [8] [9] [10] as discussed in Section 1 together with the lack of BI focused usability evaluation guidelines [44] provided the rationale for this study.…”

Section: Usability In Business Intelligencementioning

confidence: 99%

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Usability Evaluation for Business Intelligence Applications: A User Support Perspective

Jooste¹,

Biljon²,

Mentz³

2014

SACJ

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Business Intelligence (BI) applications provide business information to drive decision support. Usability is one of the factors determining the optimal use and eventual benefit derived from BI applications. The documented need for more BI usability research together with the practical necessity for BI evaluation guidelines in the mining industry provides the rationale for this study. The purpose of the study was to investigate the usability evaluation of BI applications in the context of a coal mining organization. The research is guided by the question: How can existing usability criteria be customized to evaluate the usability of BI applications. The research design included user observation, heuristic evaluation and a survey. Based on observations made during user support on a BI application used at a coal mining organization a log of usability issues was compiled. The usability issues extracted from this log was compared and contrasted with general usability criteria from literature to synthesize an initial set of BI usability evaluation criteria. These criteria were used as the basis for a heuristic evaluation of the BI application used at the coal mining organization. The same BI application was also evaluated using the Software Usability Measurement Inventory (SUMI) standardized questionnaire. The results from the two evaluations were triangulated and then compared with the BI user issues again to contextualize the findings and synthesize a validated and refined set of criteria. The main contribution of the study is the usability evaluation criteria for BI applications presented as guidelines. These guidelines deviate from existing evaluation guidelines in the emphasis on information architecture, learnability and operability.

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“…A flat list is an uncategorised list. According to Cronholm & Bruno (2008 guidelines can reside on different abstractions levels. An example is "Visibility of system status" (Nielsen, 1994) and "Match between the system and real world" (Nielsen, 1994).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%