Usability inspection

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Usability inspection is the name for a set of methods where an evaluator inspects a user interface. This is in contrast to usability testing where the usability of the interface is evaluated by testing it on real users. Usability inspections can generally be used early in the development process by evaluating prototypes or specifications for the system that can't be tested on users. Usability inspection methods are generally considered to be cheaper to implement than testing on users. [1]

Usability inspection methods include:

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Usability engineering is a field that is concerned generally with human–computer interaction and specifically with devising human–computer interfaces that have high usability or user friendliness. It provides structured methods for achieving efficiency and elegance in interface design.

Usability Capacity of a system for its users to perform tasks

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Jakob Nielsen (usability consultant)

Jakob Nielsen is a Danish web usability consultant, human–computer interaction researcher, and co-founder of Nielsen Norman Group. He was named the “guru of Web page usability” in 1998 by The New York Times and the “king of usability” by Internet Magazine.

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The availability heuristic, also known as availability bias, is a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to a given person's mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method or decision. The availability heuristic operates on the notion that if something can be recalled, it must be important, or at least more important than alternative solutions which are not as readily recalled. Subsequently, under the availability heuristic, people tend to heavily weigh their judgments toward more recent information, making new opinions biased toward that latest news.

ISO 9241 is a multi-part standard from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) covering ergonomics of human-computer interaction. It is managed by the ISO Technical Committee 159. It was originally titled Ergonomic requirements for office work with visual display terminals (VDTs). From 2006 on, the standards were retitled to the more generic Ergonomics of Human System Interaction.

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Physical examination Process by which a medical professional investigates the body of a patient for signs of disease

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The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to human–computer interaction:

The cognitive walkthrough method is a usability inspection method used to identify usability issues in interactive systems, focusing on how easy it is for new users to accomplish tasks with the system. A cognitive walkthrough is task-specific, whereas heuristic evaluation takes a holistic view to catch problems not caught by this and other usability inspection methods. The method is rooted in the notion that users typically prefer to learn a system by using it to accomplish tasks, rather than, for example, studying a manual. The method is prized for its ability to generate results quickly with low cost, especially when compared to usability testing, as well as the ability to apply the method early in the design phases before coding even begins.

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User interface design Planned operator–machine interaction

User interface (UI) design or user interface engineering is the design of user interfaces for machines and software, such as computers, home appliances, mobile devices, and other electronic devices, with the focus on maximizing usability and the user experience. In computer or software design, user interface (UI) design is the process of building interfaces that are aesthetically pleasing. Designers aim to build interfaces that are easy and pleasant to use. UI design refers to graphical user interfaces and other forms of interface design. The goal of user interface design is to make the user's interaction as simple and efficient as possible, in terms of accomplishing user goals.

Video quality is a characteristic of a video passed through a video transmission or processing system that describes perceived video degradation. Video processing systems may introduce some amount of distortion or artifacts in the video signal that negatively impacts the user's perception of a system. For many stakeholders in video production and distribution, assurance of video quality is an important task.

The pluralistic walkthrough is a usability inspection method used to identify usability issues in a piece of software or website in an effort to create a maximally usable human-computer interface. The method centers on using a group of users, developers and usability professionals to step through a task scenario, discussing usability issues associated with dialog elements involved in the scenario steps. The group of experts used is asked to assume the role of typical users in the testing. The method is prized for its ability to be utilized at the earliest design stages, enabling the resolution of usability issues quickly and early in the design process. The method also allows for the detection of a greater number of usability problems to be found at one time due to the interaction of multiple types of participants. This type of usability inspection method has the additional objective of increasing developers’ sensitivity to users’ concerns about the product design.

In natural language processing, semantic role labeling is the process that assigns labels to words or phrases in a sentence that indicates their semantic role in the sentence, such as that of an agent, goal, or result.

An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build or use such a connection or interface is called an API specification. A computer system that meets this standard is said to implement or expose an API. The term API may refer either to the specification or to the implementation.

The Klimisch score is a method of assessing the reliability of toxicological studies, mainly for regulatory purposes, that was proposed by H.J. Klimisch, M. Andreae and U. Tillmann of the chemical company BASF in 1997 in a paper entitled A Systematic Approach for Evaluating the Quality of Experimental Toxicological and Ecotoxicological Data which was published in Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology. It assigns studies to one of four categories as follows:

References

  1. Nielsen, Jakob. Usability Inspection Methods. New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons, 1994
  2. Nizamani, Sehrish; Khoumbati, Khalil; Nizamani, Sarwat; Memon, Shahzad; Nizamani, Saad; Laghari, Gulsher (2021-03-20). "A methodology for domain and culture-oriented heuristics creation and validation". Behaviour & Information Technology: 1–27. doi:10.1080/0144929X.2021.1903080. ISSN   0144-929X. S2CID   233682515.
  3. Nizamani, S.; Khoumbati, K.; Nizamani, Sarwat; Memon, S.; Nizamani, Saad (2019-03-06). "Usability evaluation of the top 10 Universities of Pakistan through Guideline Scoring". Sindh University Research Journal: Science Series. 51 (1): 151–158. doi:10.26692/sujo/2019.01.27. ISSN   1813-1743. S2CID   196182134.

See also