Training software development practitioners in usability testing

There is an increasing demand for software, suitable for large segments of users with different needs and competences. User-Centred Design (UCD) methods have been used in the software industry and taught to software developers to meet the various needs of users. The field of UCD covers a broad set of topics that can be covered in a range of courses with various content. In this paper we describe the design of a two-week course focusing on teaching UCD methods to students with various backgrounds that are useful for the students in the future. The course schedule included lectures and workshop activities where the lecturers taught UCD topics and coached the students in developing skills for using the selected UCD methods during the course to design and evaluate an interactive system. Additionally, we describe two types of course evaluations that we conducted: qualitative weekly evaluations and a post-course survey.The results show that students were in general positive about the course content and the combination of lectures and workshop activities. Hi-fi prototyping was the UCD method that the students rated as being most useful for the course and their future. They particularly liked how realistic these were for the users. The least useful method in the course and in the future was "Walking the Wall", where students read an affinity diagram and make design suggestions. Finally, we suggest changes for a prospective course, based on the results of the evaluations.

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“…This literature typically describes how developers in a software organization was introduced to and trained in UCD methods, e.g. [3,12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Get Realistic! - UCD Course Design and Evaluation

Lárusdóttir

Roto

Stage³

et al. 2018

Human-Centered Software Engineering

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“…Much of this literature offers contributions that are aimed at improvements or modifications to usability testing approaches. For example, this includes different protocols for test moderation (e.g., "question-suggestion" as opposed to think-aloud [45]), reproducing pre-identified crowdsourced problems as part of tests ("creative sprints") [37], ways of compressing testing and the reporting of findings into a single-day model [56], formally integrating design responses in the course of testing [68,64], improvements to usability problem description forms [60], or developing new training methods to prepare novice usability testers (e.g., to incorporate software developers into testing processes [9]). Significant programmes of work such as the "Usability in Danish Industry" (BIDI) project have sought to establish novel forms of usability testing via the integration of Scandinavian participatory approaches [7,32,27,28].…”

Section: Lab-based Usability Testing In Hci Research and Ux Practicementioning

confidence: 99%

How UX Practitioners Produce Findings in Usability Testing

Reeves

2019

ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact.

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Usability testing has long been a core interest of HCI research and forms a key element of industry practice. Yet our knowledge of it harbours striking absences. There are few, if any detailed accounts of the contingent, material ways in which usability testing is actually practiced . Further, it is rare that industry practitioners’ testing work is treated as indigenous and particular (instead subordinated as a ‘compromised’ version). To service these problems, this article presents an ethnomethodological study of usability testing practices in a design consultancy. It unpacks how findings are produced in and as the work of observers analysing the test as it unfolds between moderators taking participants through relevant tasks. The study nuances conventional views of usability findings as straightforwardly ‘there to be found’ or ‘read off’ by competent evaluators. It explores how evaluators/observers collaboratively work to locate relevant troubles in the test's unfolding. However, in the course of doing this work, potential candidate troubles may also routinely be dissipated and effectively ‘ignored’ in one way or another. The implications of the study suggest refinements to current understandings of usability evaluations, and affirm the value to HCI in studying industry practitioners more deeply.

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“…Other influencing factors on prioritisation include managerial conflicts, budgetary constraints, frequency of problems, location of problems and technical skills. Determining which UP to fix is a challenging issue (Bruun and Stage, 2012), but deciding how to fix them can be even harder. The generic topic of revisions has not received enough attention, and little is known about how evaluation results are interpreted and translated into revisions (De Jong and Schellens, 2000).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the reliability, validity and acceptance of a classification scheme of usability problems (CUP)

Vilbergsdóttir¹,

Hvannberg

Law

2014

Journal of Systems and Software

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The aim of this study was to evaluate the Classification of Usability Problems (CUP) scheme. The goal of CUP is to classify usability problems further to give user interface developers better feedback to improve their understanding of usability problems, help them manage usability maintenance, enable them to find effective fixes for UP, and prevent such problems from reoccurring in the future. First, reliability was evaluated with raters of different levels of expertise and experience in using CUP. Second, acceptability was assessed with a questionnaire. Third, validity was assessed by developers in two field studies. An analytical comparison was also made to three other classification schemes. CUP reliability results indicated that the expertise and experience of raters are critical factors for assessing reliability consistently, especially for the more complex attributes. Validity analysis results showed that tools used by developers must be tailored to their working framework, knowledge and maturity. The acceptability study showed that practitioners are concerned with the effort spent in applying any tool. To understand developers' work and the implications of this study two theories are presented for understanding and prioritising UP. For applying classification schemes, the implications of this study are that training and context are needed.

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Training software development practitioners in usability testing

Cited by 8 publications

References 23 publications

Get Realistic! - UCD Course Design and Evaluation

Get Realistic! - UCD Course Design and Evaluation

How UX Practitioners Produce Findings in Usability Testing

Assessing the reliability, validity and acceptance of a classification scheme of usability problems (CUP)

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