IE-PC 3212

ERGONOMICS 2

Names: Pasaol, Jessie Kyra Section: BSIE 3-NIGHT

Plarisan, Jamaica Date: February 17, 2023
Sarsalejos, Rosegen

TOPIC 11: USABILITY THEORIES

What is Usability Theories?

Usability Theory encompasses a group of ideas about how humans interact with
technology. Usability Theory focuses on the human elements that would either help or
hinder the ability to meet the aforementioned goals. High usability is defined as a system
that is simple to learn and remember, effective, visually appealing, and enjoyable to use,
and quick to recover from errors. In other words, Usability Theory studies how humans
learn and remember systems, how the human eye processes certain images and other
aspects of the user-technology experience, and determines which type of system would
allow them to do so the most efficiently and with the least struggle.

During the recent years human society evolved from the “industrial society age”
and transitioned into the “knowledge society age”. This means that knowledge media
support migrated from “pen and paper” to computer-based Information Systems (IS). This
evolution introduced some technological, organizational, and methodological changes
affecting the demand, work-load and stress over the workers, many times in a negative
way. Due to this fact Ergonomics has assumed an increasing importance, as a
science/technology that deals with the problem of adapting the work to the man, namely in
terms of Usability. Usability is then a key issue on ergonomic interventions regarding IS.
Usability can be defined as a quality or characteristic of a product, denoting whether it is
efficient, effective and satisfying for those who use it ISO 9241, part 11 (1998). However,
Usability is also an ergonomic approach and a group of techniques aimed at creating such
products, based on a user-centered design. Currently the evolution on society and
technology happens very fast, having a very high impact on work organization, and
working methods. These changes have brought also some work-related problems that affect
human life, like musculoskeletal disorders or stress.

What is Usability?

According to dictionary, usability is the effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction

with which users can achieve tasks in a particular environment of a product. However, it is
more formally defined by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) as
"the ease with which a user can learn to operate, prepare inputs for, and interpret outputs
of a system or component". At its most basic level, a usable product facilitates achievement
of the user's goals without making it difficult for the user to reach those goals.

Furthermore, the ISO 9000 standards concerns quality-management techniques

intended to improve customer satisfaction. In standard 9241, ISO defines "Ergonomic
requirements for office work with visual display terminals (VDTs)", including in that
standard a definition of usability and related terms:

 Usability - The effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction with which specified

users achieve specified goals in particular environments.
 Effectiveness - The accuracy and completeness with which specified users can
achieve specified goals in particular environments.
  Efficiency - The resources expended in relation to the accuracy and completeness
of goals achieved.
 Satisfaction - The comfort and acceptability of the work system to its users and
other people affected by its use.
Such a definition leads to design objectives and finally provides the means for explicit
measurements for usability.

However, usability is also defined by five quality components:

 Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they
encounter the design? Learnability is how quickly a new or novice user learns or
relearns the user interface to conduct basic tasks. Learnability is dependent on the
consistency of the interface and the ability of the interface to allow exploratory
learning by including undo or cancel functions. It can be measured by the time it
takes to learn a new task.
 Efficiency: Once users have learned the design how quickly can they perform
tasks? Efficiency is defined as the speed with which a user can complete a task or
accomplish a goal. It is typically measured by the length of time required to
complete a task, task success, number of keystrokes, and number of screens visited.
 Memorability: Memorability is a measure of how easy a system is to remember
after a substantial time-lapse between visits. Memorability can be determined
through system analytics.
 Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how
easily can they recover from the errors? Error tolerance refers to the ability of the
system to help users avoid and recover from error. Examples of error measurement
include frequency of errors and recovery rate of errors.
 Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design? Satisfaction consists of a set of
subjective measures regarding a user’s perception of a system’s usefulness and
impact and how likable a system is. The main measures include instruments and
interviews that may measure the users’ perception of a system.

How is usability measured?

Usability is measured by making users concretely try a product and then observing
their behavior. This is called usability testing. How does it work? Users are faced with a
scenario, they are asked to complete a task and answer a series of questions while observers
watch and listen to them. Such tests can take place in laboratories, in selected places, or
even in users’ homes.
What is Usability Testing (UT)?

Usability Testing enables to measure actual usability of a product and to

calculate such indices as Efficiency, Productivity and Satisfaction. This means that
usability testing can provide us with rather precise quantitative assessment of your
products usability attributes. This method also helps to identify the majority of problem
zones and to measure their impact on usability. Usability testing must be applied in the
course of development of new products in accordance with the user-centered designs
approach (ISO-13407). This approach helps to develop and engineer interfaces with
guaranteed excellent usability (Sergeev, 2022).

Four key types of usability tests:

 Explorative Usability Testing — (sometimes known as formative testing) is most
effective when conducted at the beginning of a product’s development cycle.
 Comparative Usability Testing — is best used when comparing two different
materials. These can be concepts, fully formed designs or even elements of designs.
 Assessment Usability Testing — a summative test, known as an assessment, is quite
simply a way to gauge a digital product or service’s usability. It is similar to other
types of usability testing, assessment testing can also be conducted early in a
product’s development cycle.
 Validation Usability Testing — occurs towards the end of a product’s development,
unlike the other types of usability testing, validation UT solely focuses on obtaining
quantitative findings.

The three overall usability testing types include:

1. Moderated vs. unmoderated usability testing

A moderated testing session is administered in person or remotely by a trained

researcher who introduces the test to participants, answers their queries, and asks follow-
up questions. Conversely, an unmoderated test is done without direct supervision;
participants might be in a lab, but it's more likely they are in their own homes and/or using
their own devices to browse the website that is being tested. Moderated testing usually
produces in-depth results thanks to the direct interaction between researchers and test
participants, but can be expensive to organize and run (e.g., securing a lab, hiring a trained
researcher, and/or providing compensation for the participants). The cost of unmoderated
testing is lower, though participant answers can remain superficial and follow-up questions
are impossible. In summary, use moderated testing to investigate the reasoning behind user
behavior, and unmoderated testing to test a very specific question or observe and measure
behavior patterns.

2. Remote vs. in-person usability testing

Remote usability tests are done over the internet or by phone; in-person testing, as
the name suggests, requires the test to be completed in the physical presence of a UX
researcher/moderator. Compared to remote tests, in-person tests provide extra data points,
since researchers can observe and analyze body language and facial expressions. However,
in-person testing is usually expensive and time-consuming: you have to find a suitable
space, block out a specific date, and recruit (and pay) participants. Remote testing doesn’t
go as deep into a participant’s reasoning, but it allows you to test large numbers of people
in different geographical areas using fewer resources.

3. Explorative vs. assessment vs. comparative testing

These three testing methods generate different types of information:

 Explorative tests are open-ended. Participants are asked to brainstorm, give

opinions, and express emotional impressions about ideas and concepts. The
information is typically collected in the early stages of product development and
helps researchers pinpoint gaps in the market, identify potential new features, and
workshop new ideas.
  Assessment research is used to test a user's satisfaction with a product and how well
they are able to use it. It's used to evaluate the product's general functionality.
 Comparative research methods involve asking users to choose which of two
solutions they prefer, and they are used to compare a website with its primary
competitors.

Cases: Usability Testing Examples

A. Let’s use as a usability testing example for shoe e-commerce platform:

 Scenario: you are currently looking for a new pair of shoes, you want to buy them
on shoesecommerce.com
 In this case, a typical task could be: “go on shoesecommerce.com and buy the red
Adidas Campus shoes, size 5”

B. Let’s try with a different example, a restaurant website:

 Scenario: you are organizing a night out and you would love to book a table at the
Italian restaurant Mamma.
 Task: “go on mammarestaurant.com and book a table for two on Wednesday the
15th of November.”

Usability Elements for Exceptional Experiences

A design’s usability depends on how well its features accommodate users’ needs
and contexts.

 Effectiveness — It supports users in completing actions accurately.

 Efficiency — Users can perform tasks quickly through the easiest process.
 Engagement — Users find it pleasant to use and appropriate for its industry/topic.
 Error Tolerance — It supports a range of user actions and only shows an error in
genuine erroneous situations. You achieve this by finding out the number, type and
severity of common errors users make, as well as how easily users can recover from
those errors.
 Ease of Learning — New users can accomplish goals easily and even more easily
on future visits.

How to Design Usability?

 Work with a clear understanding of users’ goals and show it in your design.
 Mimic the real world regarding concepts, icons and language.
 Present instantly understandable, jargon-free messages and actions users can take—
one chief action per screen.
 Limit options to give a strong information scent on an uncluttered display—show
essential information for completing tasks.
 Keep content consistent.
 Follow established norms regarding function and layout (e.g., logo positioning,
tappable buttons).
 Use proper font size, color, contrast, whitespace, etc. to: combine aesthetic appeal
with scanning readability, present a clear, logical information hierarchy, design for
accessibility.
 Use chunking and emphasize key information at the beginning and end of
interactive sequences.
 Offer informative feedback about system status.
 Include helpful navigation systems and search functionality.
 Allow for customizable controls, including shortcuts.
 Make forms easy to complete.
 Include warnings and autocorrect features to minimize errors.
 Offer easy-to-understand help documentation.
 Show clear contact options.
  Provide a back button to undo actions.
 Beware of in-app browsers and restrictions (e.g.,scrolling) in mobile design.
 Make links active.
 Describe links accurately.
 Use user personas.
 Do thorough usability testing

Why Usability is Important?

Usability is important because it is a characteristic of a product’s quality that leads

to improving product’s acceptability, increasing users’ satisfaction, improving products’
reliability and it is also financially beneficial to companies. Such benefit can be seen from
two points of view, one related with workers’ productivity (less training time and fastest
tasks completion), and the other with product sells (products easier to sell and products
market themselves, when users had positive experiences). In practical terms a product
designed with the user psychological and physiological characteristics in mind, is more
efficient to use (less time to accomplish a particular task), easier to learn (operations can
be learned by observing the object), and more satisfying to use (Nielsen, 2012).

How to Improve Usability?

There are many methods for studying usability, but the most basic and useful is
user testing, which has 3 components:

 Get hold of some representative users, such as customers for an ecommerce site or
employees for an intranet (in the latter case, they should work outside your
department).
 Ask the users to perform representative tasks with the design.
 Observe what the users do, where they succeed, and where they have difficulties
with the user interface. Shut up and let the users do the talking.

References:

https://www.usabilitybok.org/what-is-usability/ergonomics-to-usability

https://www.tcbok.org/research/applied-theory/usability-
theory/#:~:text=Usability%20Theory%20encompasses%20a%20group,particular%20
environment%20of%20a%20product.

http://ui-designer.net/usability/

https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/usability

https://www.hotjar.com/usability-testing/methods/

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-101-introduction-to-usability/

https://www.userreport.com/blog/usability-testing/