Usability by popcorn

Usability Engineering and five-minute thrillers

There are "usability engineering" and Usability Engineering. In many companies, a usability analysis works like this: A more or less competent employees spotted a website, an application or a web and holds the usability problems that stand out to him. First, this approach is not to criticize, because some important insights arising from this with certainty.

To illustrate, I would like to say a term from the one we once popular literature, use: there are books that act like popcorn bags. Let's call these books "50 Five-Minute Mystery" or "100 football stories" or whatever. I open any page, read a few paragraphs, and will maintain it reasonably well and learn something. Next time, I read on to an entirely different place and the effect is the same. Correlations are in books of this kind without meaning any popcorn tastes very good. There is no beginning and no end.

Viele Unternehmen verfahren bei Usability-Analysen nach genau diesem Prinzip und viele Unternehmen halten dieses Vorgehen für Usability-Engineering. Und damit hat ein solcher Vorgang wenig zu tun.

The size of the popcorn bag

Back to our experts, dealing with the application or website. After all this, the problems he has identified has held, and the popcorn is filled in his eyes. That may be his view of the case - but where he wants to know whether to fill the bag was actually big enough to be able to actually represent all usability weaknesses in the system? He may not know it, because his action has no set beginning and no set end. Or, he simply does not know whether he is ready. That's the difference:

For professional and systematic usability engineering is defined from the outset, how big is the bag of popcorn. Process belongs to a professional a professional and above all a systematic process.

System with professional results

Expert-based usability analysis by / / SEIBERT / MEDIA done according to the principle of guided usability inspection, the two established methods of usability research combined.

When testing a system directive to more than 100 reliable empirical rules to be checked, which can be weighted differently, and each also reflect the degree of a usability problem. The Heuristic Evaluation is the counterpart to the more flexible rigid Prüfkorsett test the Directive. Here, the expert examines whether the application important basic requirements - the so-called heuristics - fulfilled.

These methods are applied independently and can be combined in a detailed final report. Thus, a nearly complete picture of the usability of a system. An action plan based on them contains recommendations for action to address the identified problems and for the optimization of the application or the Web.

The Guided Usability Inspection is the systematic and professional equivalent of usability by popcorn.

Usability by popcorn bag is completely dependent on the competence of the daily form and also the equipment of that period, fills the bag. Certainly result from the findings, but not all and not all too important. Potential research possibilities thus remain unused. This is inefficient, because the procedure could be carried out systematically with the same or even less effort and achieve so, in fact reliable, actionable, relevant and comprehensive results.