UsabilityNews

Syntagm has benchmarked over 250 intranets since 2002. Now the company has applied its expertise to e-commerce sites, giving unprecedented comparisons of user experience between individual sites and an overview of market segments as a whole.

The first report addresses the UK mobile phone industry and includes 12 leading vendors: Argos, Carphone Warehouse, Expansys, mobiles.co.uk, O2, Orange, phones4u, Tesco, T-Mobile, Three, Virgin Mobile and Vodafone. The 58-page summary report (free for download at the foot of this page) provides group scores for each of the sites with numerous examples of good and bad solutions to the user experience issues examined. Most are illustrated with screenshots – the report includes over 70.

These reports are intended for a broad audience from CEO's and CIO's right through to web developers.

By David Sloan


I had the honour of taking part in a panel session discussing How Does Accessibility Fit into Today’s Usability Practice? at the Usability Professionals’ Association Conference (UPA 2010) in Munich last week. The session was organised by Shawn Henry of the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative and provided an opportunity to debate the challenges of promoting and supporting accessible ICT design within a wider usability context. A number of interesting discussion points emerged – here are my reflections on the panel session.

The format of the session was that each panellist was provided with a few minutes to present a position statement on accessibility in today’s practice, and this was followed by questions and discussion. In the short time available to them, my fellow panelists each took a specific angle on accessibility:

- Liam McGee (Communis) argued that usability is ‘accessibility for sissies’, and illustrated how he viewed accessibility as a term that covered many objectives of usability and search-engine optimisation.
- Amy Chen (Senior Usability Secialist at Oracle) described how a large technology vendor can adopt accessibility as part of the design, development and implementation of their technology products.
- Rolf Molich (DialogDesign). As a highly respected and highly influential figure in the usability and HCI field, Rolf took on the mantle of devil’s advocate, arguing that the message of accessibility advocates can sometimes be obfuscated, disguising general good practice in usable and user-centred design as complexly-worded accessibility guidelines.

By Don Norman
jnd.org


One step forward, two steps back.

The usability crisis is upon us, once again. We suspect most of you thought it was over. After all, HCI certainly understands how to make things usable, so the emphasis has shifted to more engaging topics, such as exciting new applications, new technological developments, and the challenges of social networks and ubiquitous connection and communication. Well you are wrong.

In a recent column for Interactions (reprinted here) Norman pointed out that the rush to develop gestural interfaces - "natural" they are sometimes called - well-tested and understood standards of interaction design were being overthrown, ignored, and violated. Yes, new technologies require new methods, but the refusal to follow well-tested, well-established principles leads to usability disaster.

Recently, Raluca Budui and Hoa Loranger from the Nielsen Norman group performed usability tests on Apple's iPad (reference 1), reaching much the same conclusion. The new applications for gestural control in smart cellphones (notably the iPhone and the Android) and the coming arrival of larger screen devices built upon gestural operating systems (starting with Apple's iPad) promise even more opportunities for well-intended developers to screw things up. Nielsen put it this way: "The first crop of iPad apps revived memories of Web designs from 1993, when Mosaic first introduced the image map that made it possible for any part of any picture to become a UI element. As a result, graphic designers went wild: anything they could draw could be a UI, whether it made sense or not. It's the same with iPad apps: anything you can show and touch can be a UI on this device. There are no standards and no expectations."

Why are we having trouble? Several reasons:

Demands for improved usability and developments in user experience (UX) have become pertinent due to the increasing complexities of digital libraries (DLs) and user expectations associated with the advances in Web technologies. In particular, usability research and testing are becoming necessary means to assess the current and future breeds of information environments such that they can be better understood, well-formed and validated.

Usability studies and digital library development are not often intertwined due to the existing cultural model in system development. Usability issues are likely to be addressed post-hoc or as a priori assumptions. Recent initiatives have advanced usability studies in terms of information environment development. However, significant work is still required to address the usability of new services arising from the trends in social networking and Web 2.0.

The JISC-funded project, Usability and Contemporary User Experience in Digital Libraries (UX2.0), contributes to this general body of work by enhancing a digital library through a development and evaluation framework centred on usability and contemporary user experience. Part of the project involves usability inspection and research on contemporary user experience techniques. This article highlights the findings of the usability inspection work recently conducted and reported by UX2.0. The report provided a general impression of digital library usability; notwithstanding, it revealed a range of issues, each of which merits a systematic and vigorous study. The discussion points outlined here provide a resource generally useful for the JISC Community and beyond.

Dr Jakob Nielsen, a Danish usability consultant, says that the “every man for himself” spirit of Apple's iTunes app store means that too many applications have features that users can’t find, features vary between apps and finding quality apps is too difficult. Dr Nielsen, who began working on usability as an Engineer at Sun Microsystems in the mid-1990s, told the Telegraph that the iPad ecosystem reminded him of the early days of the web.

“From a fundamental or theoretical perspective it’s very much the same. It’s every man for himself. Everybody just does as they please,” he said. “I think this was exacerbated by the way the launch was handled because they kept it under wraps. Nobody could get an iPad before it was launched to the general public. If we have one piece of advice within the usability field it is to do user testing.”

There are three main problems with iPad apps, Dr Nielsen said, the first of which is finding the good ones in the iTunes store. He said: “How do you find out what is a good game or news application? There’s really nothing other than the bestseller list and a few topic categories, particularly compared with the eco-system around getting an application for a PC or Mac. You’re very often left with recommendations from friends."

Dr Nielsen also said that inconsistent features between apps was a problem: “You need conventions for what’s movable, for example, or how to zoom in or out. But you only really learn things if they are consistently applied. If you try something now and it works and then I go to another application and it doesn’t work, I start losing faith. I don’t get that reinforcement, which is an essential learning technique. You want people to not pay attention to the interaction, you want them to pay attention to the content or the features. One of the problems now is that the device itself screams to you - it wants you to pay attention.”

The third problem, Dr Nielsen said, are ‘invisible features’ - ones that are not obvious and that users have to discover for themselves.

By John Wait and Enlie Wang


“Books are dead.” “Everyone reads books on iPhones.” “No one reads on the iPhone because the eReaders are lousy.” “My iPhone eReader is great.” “The Kindle is dead.” “The iPhone is dead. Everyone will use only iPads to read.”

You may have seen some of these proclamations in the media and on Twitter or blogs. But what’s the real story with using your iPhone as an eReader, and which eReader is the best? As a publisher of books in general – and technology books in particular – we wanted some answers, so we set out to conduct usability tests on what people thought of eReaders on the iPhone. Our plan was to use the results from this usability study to inform the development of our own next generation eReader, and to understand what features of other popular ereaders that our customers cared about most.

We wanted to learn if people really use iPhones to read books and what that reading experience was like. We decided we would do our testing during the Voices That Matter iPhone Developers Conference, held April 24-25 in Seattle, Washington. For our iPhone eReader usability study, we wanted to pick a book that the conference attendees were probably familiar with and may have already read in print and on their iPhone, so we chose Aaron Hillegass’s book, Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X, Third Edition. We considered testing reading habits with the iPad too, but decided the iPad was too new and not enough people had used it to make a fair comparison.

For the usability test, we interviewed seven people. 6 of the 7 people had used eReaders on the iPhone, and most used the iPhone to read technical books/text books, not fiction or other subjects. Their average age was 42, they had owned an iPhone for at least 2.4 years, and used their iPhone at least 7 hours per day. When asked how technical they were on a scale of 1 to 10, they rated themselves a 9.1 (with 10 being the most technical). People said they read books deeply with their iPhones — if not cover-to-cover, then at least a chapter at a time.

By Susan Weinschenk


You may have heard this story about an elephant:


"A king brings six men into a dark building. They cannot see anything. The king says to them, "I have bought this animal from the wild lands to the East. It is called an elephant." "What is an elephant?" the men ask. The king says, "Feel the elephant and describe it to me." The man who feels a leg says the elephant is like a pillar, the one who feels the tail says the elephant is like a rope, the one who feels the trunk says the elephant is like a tree branch, the one who feels the ear says the elephant is like a hand fan, the one who feels the belly says the elephant is like a wall, and the one who feels the tusk says the elephant is like a solid pipe. "You are all correct", says the king, "You are each feeling just a part of the elephant.""


The story of the elephant reminds me of the different view of design that people of different backgrounds, education, and experience have. A visual designer approaches UX design from one point of view, the interaction designer from another, and the programmer from yet another. It can be helpful to understand and even experience the part of the elephant that others are experiencing.

I'm a psychologist by training and education. So the part of the elephant I experience applies what we know about people and how we apply that to UX design. I take research and knowledge about the brain, the visual system, memory, and motivation and extrapolate UX design principles from that.

This article is a snapshot of the psychologist's view of the elephant:

By Dr Andrew Hsu


Until recently, a device designer wanting to add a touchscreen to a device would have faced a lot of challenges. Integration issues, increased cost, usability problems would have stood in the way. But now that mobile handsets have made touchscreens ubiquitous, that resistance has all but evaporated. A number of suppliers (including my own company, Synaptics) have now proven touchscreen technology in the high-volume handset market, and the supply chain is rapidly lowering costs and solving usability issues.

Resistive touchscreen technology is still the lowest-cost alternative; however, newer capacitive-based products are increasingly cost competitive. And where manufacturers would formerly have nixed the idea of adding touch-enabled displays purely on the basis of cost, they now see the technology as essential to increasing their sales and helping them stay competitive. Indeed, a common rally cry heard in many design meetings continues to be, “We have to make our device work like the iPhone.”

Touchscreens are more than just a cool way to interface with a device. They allow designers to create highly dynamic, configurable, personalizable controls for a device, which means designers can optimize the device controls in software to suit the needs of any particular application or use scenario. Yes, designers now have a virtually open canvas to create customized user interfaces. As an end-user, I certainly appreciate the design economy and usability benefits of dynamic user interfaces. For example, when my touchscreen phone is running its music player application, a customized set of control elements appears on the screen. The custom UI is optimized to provide information about each control and only show the control that can be used at any given time. This is in stark contrast to hardware-based controls, in which users are forever trying to figure out what each button does in a given application (or if that button even does anything at all).

By Graham Charlton


There are plenty of tools around which allow website owners to conduct tests and attempt to identify problem areas on their websites. I've listed ten of the best free usability testing tools, which are either completely free of charge, or allow users to try before they buy:

the latest issue of the journal, Interacting with Computers, Volume 22, Issue 4, Pages 241-312 (July 2010) is now available. This is a Special Issue, edited by Gavin Doherty and Timothy Bickmore on the topic: Supportive Interaction: Computer Interventions for Mental Health.


CONTENTS
Editorial: Gavin Doherty, Timothy Bickmore

- Design and evaluation guidelines for mental health technologies.
Gavin Doherty, David Coyle, Mark Matthews
Abstract: We present an initial set of design guidelines extracted from the literature and from a series of development projects for software to support mental health interventions. We motivate and explain these guidelines with reference to concrete design projects and problems.

- Problems people with dementia have with kitchen tasks: The challenge for pervasive computing.
Joseph P. Wherton, Andrew F. Monk
Abstract: This paper is intended to inform the design of technologies that help people perform daily tasks, by prompting them when they have difficulties, thus fostering independence and quality of life.

- Using a touch screen computer to support relationships between people with dementia and caregivers.
Arlene J. Astell, Maggie P. Ellis, Lauren Bernardi, Norman Alm, Richard Dye, Gary Gowans, Jim Campbell
Abstract: CIRCA is an interactive, multimedia touch screen system that contains a wide range of stimuli to prompt reminiscing. The intention is that people with dementia and caregivers will explore CIRCA together, using the recollections sparked by the media as the basis for conversations.

- Maintaining reality: Relational agents for antipsychotic medication adherence.
Timothy W. Bickmore, Kathryn Puskar, Elizabeth A. Schlenk, Laura M. Pfeifer, Susan M. Sereika
Abstract: We describe an animated, conversational computer agent designed to promote antipsychotic medication adherence among patients with schizophrenia. We discuss special considerations in designing interventions for this patient population, and challenges in developing and evaluating conversational agents in the mental health domain.

- Response to a relational agent by hospital patients with depressive symptoms.
Timothy W. Bickmore, Suzanne E. Mitchell, Brian W. Jack, Michael K. Paasche-Orlow, Laura M. Pfeifer, Julie O’Donnell
Abstract: In the current study, we sought to evaluate how hospitalised medical patients would respond to a computer animated conversational agent that has been developed to provide information in an empathic fashion about a patient’s hospital discharge plan. In particular, we sought to examine how patients who have a high level of depressive symptoms respond to this system.

- The therapist user interface of a virtual reality exposure therapy system in the treatment of fear of flying.
Willem-Paul Brinkman, Charles van der Mast, Guntur Sandino, Lucy T. Gunawan, Paul M.G. Emmelkamp
Abstract: The use of virtual reality (VR) technology to support the treatment of patients with phobia, such as the fear of flying, is getting considerable research attention. Research mainly focuses on the patient experience and the effect of the treatment. In this paper, however, the focus is on the interaction therapists have with the system.

The winners of the 2010 MEX User Experience Awards were announced on 19th May at an evening reception in London. Hosted on the 1st night of the 7th international MEX User Experience Conference, the Awards were attended by 100 leading mobile industry executives, who were entertained with a special summer BBQ party. The Awards were sponsored by Immersion (Silver sponsor) and DCKTN (Innovation sponsor).

The MEX Awards challenge the world's most talented students, designers and companies to create cutting edge mobile and multi-platform user experience innovations. Contestants must identify their target user and then illustrate with video, screenshots and storyboards how they would meet the needs of that particular customer.

Researchers at The Open University have designed a novel application for the Microsoft Surface, an interactive tabletop computer to help families and groups visiting Cambridge make the most of their time in the city. The multi-touch table will allow several people to use the application at the same time and plan an itinerary for their visit.

The application, hosted by Visit Cambridge at the Cambridge Tourist Information Centre, will display a wide range of visitor attractions with additional information suggesting how to make the most of your stay.

Paul Marshall, Researcher in the Department of Computing, said: “The tabletop planner will allow up to four people to individually decide what they would like to do, and then negotiate what to prioritise before printing out a combined itinerary. We carried out research and found that this kind of shared planning often doesn't happen, so we're interested to study if the technology will enhance people’s experience”.

Frankie McGhee, Tourism Services Manager, said: “The multi-touch application is a fantastic way of encouraging visitors to the City to experience for themselves some of the excellent things to see and do whilst they are here. Plus it's not only Mum or Dad that decides - the whole family can plan their day out together".

The research was carried out as part of The Open University’s ShareIT project, which aims to find real-life applications for technology research. The tabletop planner will be launched on 12 May 2010 and will be available for a month, during which the research team will evaluate its use by visitors.

A computer algorithm capable of identifying sarcasm in written text has been developed by researchers, paving the way for more sophisticated communication between computers and humans. The formula could have implications for the way user generated content, such as Twitter feeds, Facebook updates and user reviews, are interpreted by web analytics tools.

To test the formula, the research team from Israel analysed 66,000 Amazon reviews for sarcasm, with a 77% success rate. Devised by computer scientists at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the algorithm has been programmed to recognise sarcasm in lengthy texts by analysing patterns of phrases and punctuation often used to indicate irony. The formula takes into account three different human annotators tagging sentences for sarcasm.

The team then identified certain sarcastic patterns that emerged in the reviews and created a classification algorithm that puts each statement into a sarcastic class. The algorithms were then trained on that seed set of 80 sentences from the collection of reviews. These annotated sentences helped the algorithm learn what sorts of words and patterns distinguish sarcastic remarks – those that mean the opposite of what they literally convey, or that convey a sentiment inconsistent with the literal reading. The researchers "trained" the algorithm to recognise sarcasm by teaching it nearly 5,500 sentences from Amazon reviews that human volunteers had marked as either sarcastic or non-sarcastic.

The sarcastic phrases from the pool of Amazon reviews used for the research included "Great for insomniacs", "Are these iPods designed to die after two years?" and "Defective by design". From its learned list of sarcastic phrases, the algorithm was taught to recognise patterns of words commonly used by writers to show that they do not mean to be taken literally.

The academics write in their study: "We found strong features that recognize sarcastic utterances, however, a combination of more subtle features served best in recognizing various facets of sarcasm."