Q10 Flashcards
Describe two distinct ways in which use of the ‘think aloud’ method can bias the results of an evaluation.
- The environment and method is not natural to the user.
- Most people do not want to appear silly, and so there is a risk that they won’t speak until they’ve thought through the situation in detail.
List five different categories of evaluation methods
- Observing users
- Asking users their opinions
- Asking experts their opinions
- Testing users’ performance
- Modelling users’ task performance to predict the efficacy of a user interface
Give, with justification and without repetition, one advantage and one disadvantage of Heuristic evaluation.
Advantage: Heuristic evaluations can be employed early in the design life cycle to find usability problems.
Disadvantage: It requires a certain level of knowledge and experience to apply the heuristics effectively
Give, with justification and without repetition, one advantage and one disadvantage of The keystroke model.
Advantage: Can be applied in situations that require minimal amounts of work and interaction with a computer interface or software design.
Disadvantage: It is best suited to evaluate and time specific tasks that require, on average, less than 5 minutes to complete.
Name an evaluation method which does not involve users.
Analytical evaluation, in which users’ are not directly involved. This approach includes various inspection methods and predictive models.
WalHal technologies have developed a prototype of an interactive product, SuperSpectacles, which aims to assist partially sighted people to recognise friends. SuperSpectacles consist of a pair of sunglasses, with cameras in the sidepieces, linked to software running on a mobile phone. When the user looks at someone, the camera captures an image of their face, and searches through the user’s contacts to match the
face with a name. It then discreetly prompts the user via their earpiece.
You have been asked to evaluate this prototype.
Give one advantage and one disadvantage to evaluating this particular prototype in a usability laboratory as opposed to in a more naturalistic setting.
Advantage: Identifying problems in order to inform product design or redesign.
Disadvantage The lab is not likely to have many friends of the partially sighted people for whom the evaluation is for, and to arrange for them to be in the lab would be costly and probably disruptive as there is likely to be quite a few friends to arrange for.
WalHal technologies have developed a prototype of an interactive product, SuperSpectacles, which aims to assist partially sighted people to recognise friends. SuperSpectacles consist of a pair of sunglasses, with cameras in the sidepieces, linked to software running on a mobile phone. When the user looks at someone, the camera captures an image of their face, and searches through the user’s contacts to match the
face with a name. It then discreetly prompts the user via their earpiece.
You have been asked to evaluate this prototype.
Give one advantage and two disadvantages of using developers as participants of the evaluation.
Advantage: They will be aware of what they want the product/system to do.
Disadvantage 1: They may report problems that don’t exist.
Disadvantage 2: They may actually miss problems that users’ do have with the product/system.
Who would conduct a cognitive walkthrough?
It could be conducted by one or more evaluators.
Describe in one sentence what happens during a cognitive walkthrough.
The cognitive walkthrough is a way to test the usability of interactive systems or products.
Describe briefly the three pieces of information that an evaluator wishes to find out during a cognitive walkthrough:
- Whether the users know what to do
- If the users can see how to do it
- If the users understand from feedback whether they did it correctly.
