Tag Archives: usability testing

Heuristic evaluation

Heuristic evaluation is done by looking at the interface and trying to find out what is bad and what is good about this interface. The goal of heuristic evaluation is to find usability problems. The more people evaluators the better. The single evaluator will miss most of the usability problems in an interface. Averaged over

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Paper Prototyping by Carolyn Snyder

Carolyn Snyder defines paper prototyping as a method of brainstorming, designing, creating, testing and communicating user interfaces. She simply explains how does it work. You meet members of your team to choose the type of user who represents audience for the interface. You also determine tasks you expect this user to do. Then you sketch

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Usability Testing – guide and stats

Who should we ask to test our design? Should that be an experts or rather novices? In 1992 Jakob Nielsen (born 1957 in Copenhagen, Denmark, a leading web usability consultant) made an experiment, in which he used three groups of evaluators: Novice, Double and Double. Novice – no experience in usability engineering Regular – general

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Interpreting Tests Results of Usability Testing

Let’s assume I arranged an usability test for a new project and my team came out with ideas how to improve the assignment. What to do now? According to a book “Don’t make me think” by Steve Krug, I should review the results right away. The team has to analyze the problems and decide how

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Cognitive science by Donald Norman

Donald Norman, born December 25, 1935, is a founder of The Cognitive Science Society and specialist in cognitive science (cognitive science is the study of how information is represented and transformed in the brain). Donald Norman is considered to be the first to apply advanced human factors to design via cognitive design. Donald Norman is

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A Practical Guide to Usability Testing

During a design process of an interface, a designer should has a view of an potential user of the interface. There are some important factors to consider in developing a profile of a potential user. …such as: user’s work experience (kind of job, years of experience etc.) general computer experience (types of applications used etc.)

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Creating a model of a user (persona) for usability testing

All interfaces are created for specific audience. In order to create a user friendly environment, designers have to understand who they create an interface for. The easiest and most effective way is to create a persona, who will represent an average user of our product. It is like writing a script for a movie and

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Paper Prototyping

Paper prototyping is a method for designing and testing user interfaces. Because the prototype is on paper and it is easy to modify rapidly, it is a perfect method for brain storming and a very early usability testing. The paper prototyping was already used in early 1990s by companies such as IBM and Microsoft. According

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