Principles and Prototype Testing - Midterm

Question 1

5 Quality Factors: List

Answer 1

• learnability
• efficiency
• errors
• satisfaction
• memorability

Question 2

Learnability

Answer 2

How quickly you can pick it up

Question 3

Efficiency - Nielsen

Answer 3

How quickly can you perform tasks after learning

Question 4

Memorability

Answer 4

How easy is it to come back to the language after some time away

Question 5

Errors

Answer 5

How many errors do users make, how severe are they, and how quickly can they recover

Question 6

Satisfaction

Answer 6

Combination of other factors

Question 7

Efficiency - Louden

Answer 7

translation efficiency, optimizability, execution efficiency, implementability, writability, maintainability

Question 8

Regularity

Answer 8

Are there “gotchas” - something that seems like it should work, but doesn’t. Generality: can you do everything to everything? Orthogonality: do things work the same everywhere? Can you do something everywhere? Uniformity: how similar do things look?

Question 9

Security

Answer 9

Security from bad programming - how easy is it to mess stuff up, and how severe are those errors

Question 10

Simplicity

Answer 10

Is very vague, but seems important.

Question 11

Abstraction

Answer 11

Whenever there is repetition, solve with abstraction. Provide programmers ability to abstract their own code where possible.

Question 12

Examples of Abstraction

Answer 12

Variables
Subroutines
Loops

Question 13

User Testing Steps

Answer 13

• Show examples
• Give task written down
• Ask them to perform task given examples
• Ask them to think aloud

Question 14

Interpreting user reactions

Answer 14

• Don’t take suggestions
• Use confusion to identify which principle was being violated
• What errors were made and were they show-stopping