Usability

Lawrence Najjar

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Outline

• Purpose• Usability benefits• General usability principles• Usability process and activities• Common user interface project• Accessibility• Getting usability services• Usability resources• Summary• Usability lab tour

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Purpose

• Learn some usability principles

• Get familiar with usability process, tools, and techniques

• Get exposed to accessibility • Learn how to get usability services

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Benefits of Usability

• Increase•User satisfaction

•User productivity

•Product acceptance

•Product marketability

• Decrease •Development costs

•User errors and frustration

•Training costs

•Support costs

•Maintenance costs (Karat, 1990)

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Usability Benefits – Some Numbers

• Estimated savings when software problem found and fixed in early design phase rather than after delivery: 100 times (Boehm, 1987)

• Estimated amount of software code saved by prototyping compared to not prototyping: 40% (Boehm et al., 1984)

• Rank of user involvement as predictor of successful projects: 1 (The Standish Group, 1994)

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Usability Benefits – Money

• Estimated sales increase for SQL Explorer 5.0 vs. 4.0 due to usability improvements: 25% (Landry, 2001) • Increase in e-commerce sales after improving usability on IBM.com: 400% (Tedeschi, 1999)

• Increase in daily online purchases after improving usability on Dell.com: $33 million (Black, 2002)

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General Usability Principles

• Know your user.• You’re not the user.• Iterate. Iterate. Iterate.• Consistency is usability.• The user is in control. (example)• Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.• Make important stuff look important.• Avoid errors. (example)• Accessibility improves usability. (example)

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Example for “User is in control”

Needs a “Skip Intro” hyperlink

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Example for “Avoid errors”

Before

After

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Example for “Accessibility improves usability””

Before

After

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Usability Process

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Usability Activities

PHASE ACTIVITY PMO DOCUMENT

Concept User profile creation MRD

Define usability activities for project

PFG

Define usability goals for project

PFG

Review UPP, MRD, PFG MRD, PFG

Analysis Perform task analysis SRS

Create and evaluate low-fidelity prototype (example)

SRS

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Example of “low-fidelity prototype”

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Usability Activities (Continued)

Review SRS architecture

SRS

Definition Write usability project plan

RCD

Define usability objectives

RCD

Design Request & define product visuals

SDD

Evaluate hi-fidelity prototype (example)

SDD

Write user interface design specification

SDD

Review SDD architecture

SDD

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Example of “high-fidelity prototype”

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Usability Activities (Continued)

Present usability section to release team

SDD

Create usability test plan

Development Conduct usability walkthrough

Perform usability test

Create QA usability checklist

QA Master Test Plan

Review Beta Project Plan

BPP

Verification Conduct executive installation and use of product

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Common User Interface Project

• Goal: Common visual “look” for all BMC products, documentation, and marketing materials

• Advantages:•Addresses customer preferences• Improves BMC branding• Improves ease of use•Decreases development time•Decreases QA evaluation time•Reduces maintenance costs

• Status•Presented idea to various internal BMC groups•Got feedback from customers•Currently iterating Web-based design

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Sample Web-based Concept

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Accessibility

• Required for Federal electronic and information technology purchases by Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1998

• Requires equivalent functional access for persons with disabilities compared to persons without disabilities

• Spreading beyond Federal government

• Provides a marketing opportunity for us

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Some Accessibility Requirements

• “Color coding shall not be used as the only means of conveying information, indicating an action, prompting a response, or distinguishing a visual element.” (example)

• “When electronic forms are used, the form shall allow people using assistive technology to access the information, field elements, and functionality required for completion and submission of the form, including all directions and cues.”

• “Support services for products shall accommodate the communication needs of end-users with disabilities.”

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Example of “color coding as only means of communicating info”

Before

After

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Browser Accessibility

• “A text equivalent for every non-text element shall be provided (e.g., via "alt", "longdesc", or in element content).”

• “Row and column headers shall be identified for data tables.” (example)

• “Markup shall be used to associate data cells and header cells for data tables that have two or more logical levels of row or column headers.” (example)

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Example of “associate data cells and header cells … two or more logical levels”<TABLE BORDER=1 CELLPADDING=3 CELLSPACING=1 FRAME=BOX summary="This database status summary table lists the Status, Office, Datasource, and DBMS (column headings) and the regions (rows)"><CAPTION>Database Backups</CAPTION><TR> <TH></TH> <TH id="c2">Status</TH> <TH id="c3">Office</TH> <TH id="c4">Datasource</TH> <TH id="c5">DBMS</TH> </TR> <TR> <TH id="r2">East Region</TH> <TD></TD><TD></TD><TD></TD><TD></TD></TR> <TR> <TD id="r3" ></TD> <TD headers="c2 r2 r3">Failed</TD> <TD headers="c3 r2 r3">New York</TD> <TD headers="c4 r2 r3">zimbabwe : ZIM817MA</TD> <TD headers="c5 r2 r3">Oracle 8.0.5</TD></TR>...</TABLE>

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Browser Accessibility

• “When pages utilize scripting languages to display content, or to create interface elements, the information provided by the script shall be identified with functional text that can be read by assistive technology.”

• “When a web page requires that an applet, plug-in or other application be present on the client system to interpret page content, the page must provide a link to a plug-in or applet that complies with §1194.21(a) through (l).”

• “A method shall be provided that permits users to skip repetitive navigation links.” (example)

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Example of “skip repetitive navigation links”

<a href="#main"><img alt="Skip to main content" height="1" width="1" border="0" src="//www.ibm.com/i/c.gif"/></a>. . .<a name="main"><!--Main Content--></a> . . .

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Getting Usability Services

Usability services include:•Getting usability person assigned to your project

•Having usability person perform usability review

•Creating visual designs

•Getting assistance with accessibility

Contact:•Tony Haverda, manager, Interface Design and Usability

• Tony_Haverda@bmc.com• Internal 2-6474

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Usability Resources

• BMC Usability Web site: http://usability.bmc.com/

• Feigenbaum, B. A. (2002, October 1). Coding for accessibility – Use JFC/Swing to build accessibility into your Java applications [On-line]. Available: http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/java/ library/j-access/

• Hom, James (2003). Usability methods toolbox [On- line]. Available: http://jthom.best.vwh.net/usability/

• Nielsen, J. Useit.com – Jakob Nielsen’s Web site [On- line]. Available: http://www.useit.com

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Usability Resources (Continued)

• Sun Microsystems (2003). Accessibility quick reference [On-line]. Available: http://www.sun.com/access/ developers/access.quick.ref.html#apptips

• Vredenburg, K., Isenssee, S., & Righi, C. (2001). User- centered design: An integrated approach. Prentice Hall: Upper Saddle River, NJ.

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Summary

For maximum usability:•Start usability work early

• Identify users and their objectives

•Keep users involved throughout the project

• Iterate designs quickly, easily, and cheaply

•Evaluate usability with representative users

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References

• Black, J. (2002, December 4). Usability is next to profitability. BusinessWeek Online [On-line]. Available: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/ dec2002/tc2002124_2181.htm

• Boehm, B. (1987). Industrial software metrics top 10 list. IEEE Software, 4(5), 84-85.

• Boehm, B. W., Gray, T. E., & Seewaldt, T. (1984). Prototyping vs. specifying: A multi-project experiment. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 10(3), 290- 333.

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References

• Landry, R. (2001, September 24). Usability ROI. BMC internal memo to Neil Backes from Scott Isensee. Statement by Rich Landry, SQL Explorer product manager. • Karat, C.-M. (1990). Cost-benefit analysis of usability engineering techniques. Proceedings of the Human Factors Society, Orlando, Florida, 839-843.

• Section 508 standards [On-line]. Available: http://www.section508.gov/index.cfm

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References

• Tedeschi, B. (1999, August 30). Good Web site design

can lead to healthy sales. New York Times e-commerce report [On-line]. Available: http://www.nytimes.com/ library/tech/99/08/cyber/commerce/ 30commerce.html

• The Standish Group (1994). The CHAOS report [On- line]. Available: http://standishgroup.com/ sample_research/chaos_1994_1.php

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Thank You

To get a copy of this presentation:1. Go to http://usability.bmc.com2. Click on “Usability Brown Bag”

To get usability services:• Contact Tony Haverda, manager, Interface Design and

Usability• Tony_Haverda@bmc.com• Internal 2-6474

Usability lab tour!