User Interface Redesign for Special Topic
Added on 2019-09-13
5 Pages1878 Words341 Views
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Literature Review, Kinds of Usability Issue and making a WalkthroughUsing the research literature, outline the kinds of usability and user experience issue that might be raised by your chosen topic. Gather evidence from e.g. the Internet, and the ux literature e.g. hcibib.org and acm.org/dl to support your argument.Ask workshop helpers to suggest ‘kinds of issue’ and sources of relevant previous work.Frequently Asked QuestionsQ: What do you mean ‘usability issue’?A ‘usability issue’ is ‘a usability problem’, but said in a way that encourages investigation anddiscussion, rather than presuming fault and making people defensive. Q: What do you mean ‘kind of usability issue’?I mean a general type of issue. Not an instance issue, such as ‘the font for the Help button in the header is too small’, and not a very generic, bland issue, such as ‘this website is not very user-friendly’, but a mid- level of detail that makes useful distinctions about the qualities of interaction that might be lacking, and the perceptions that might arise, given thetype of users, tasks, and technology application of concern, say ‘readability’ and ‘findability’.The ‘qualities of interaction’ lecture identifies some possible ‘kinds of issue’. Examples include ‘guessability’ (of a door activated by an invisible mechanism such as face-recognition), or ‘engagement’ with a game.Q: Where can I find good ‘literature’?www.acm.org/dl. Search in the proceedings of the annual CHI (Computer Human Interaction) conference- the ‘Human Factors in Computer Systems series)www.hcibib.org. Search this online bibliography. This will point you to various conferences and journals, many of which are accessable online from a KU terminal or via the KU library.If you know the name of the article, you may be able to google it directly.If you cannot find articles about your particular system e.g. ‘sports shops’, try searching for the kind of issue you want to know about e.g. ‘ease of learning’, ‘design of icon sets’, ‘spoken help’Q: Are news and practitioner blogs ‘literature’?No.The ‘news’ about trends in the real world you collected last week is not really ‘scholarly material’ – itdescribes ‘NOW’.
Practitioner blogs are better than nothing, but they may not have been reviewed by anyone who is any good. You might be learning easily digestible ‘half-truths’ that do not generalise very well. Let me tell you the story of ‘the 3 click rule’ (a user should be able to achieve their goals in 3 clicks or less). This rule was promoted by many people, but soon confirmation dialogs were being omitted ‘because it added an extra click’ and wizard pages became cluttered ‘because we can only have 3 clicks’. There is something in the ‘3 click rule’ – one more click means additional workload, and if removing a click reduces workload that’s good. However, users do many kinds of mental work. Acting (clicking) is workload, but so is problem-solving, perceiving and remembering. Reducing click workload might not be a good idea if so doing increases ‘problem-solving’ and ‘perception’ workload, as in the examples above. Good design reduces the need for cognitive work (of all kinds, and overall), not just the work of clicking (to do this). You can still find ‘the 3 click rule’ on the net.Q: Is a text book ‘literature’?Yes, but it may not help your project very much. Textbooks tend to contain information relevant to most projects in general, and which everyone needs to know to even attempt a user-interface redesign project. As such, it tends to repeat the lectures, and we expect each other to know this already. You need additional material about the special concerns and issues of your topic .e.g. not ‘Shneidermans 10 golden rules’, but ‘design guidelines for touch screens’; not ‘how to conduct a focus group’ but ‘how to get evaluative feedback from children’; not ‘how to conduct a usability test’but findings of a previous usability evaluation of a system like yours’. Q: Do I have to have a separate literature review section?No. Good students weave citations to references into their argument. But I recommend a separate section in the handout, because I find a separate ‘Literature Review’ section is a good start, and benefitting from the literature is harder than it seems. Weaker students often avoid scholarly material altogether – but please don;t avoid it. Create a separate literature review section - this is a good place to start.As you draft and redraft your coursework you may find that you can introduce other people’s work throughout your report as it is required to support your own arguments, conclusions or design decisions. These arguments tend to evolve as your better understand the topic and as you ask critical questions of your early drafts. Identify and summarise the literature for now, and work out how it is relevant and useful. You can ‘weave it in’ later.Q: How does the literature review help?Use the literature to:
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