IMAT 5209: Usability Evaluation of Microwave Control Panel System

This report presents a comprehensive usability evaluation of a microwave control panel, focusing on its interactive system and user interaction. The evaluation includes a use case diagram illustrating user interactions such as inserting food, adjusting temperature and time, and updating the panel's time. The methodology encompasses assessing efficiency, learnability, memorability, error rates, and user satisfaction through various testing procedures. The findings indicate high efficiency and learnability, with users quickly adapting to the control panel's functions, whether analogue or digital. Memorability is also strong, with most users easily recalling operation procedures after a single demonstration. Error rates are negligible, although some minor issues were noted with both analogue and digital control panels. Overall, the evaluation provides valuable insights into the usability of microwave control panels and their effectiveness in meeting user needs. Desklib provides a platform to access similar solved assignments and past papers for students.

Running head: USABILITY EVALUATION OF MICROWAVE CONTROL PANEL
USABILITY EVALUATION OF MICROWAVE CONTROL
PANEL
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1USABILITY EVALUATION OF MICROWAVE CONTROL PANEL
Part One: The Interactive System and its users
The interactive system is a typical type of computer system which are characterised
by vast amount of interaction between the computer and the humans. A common example of
this type of interactive system is the Microsoft Windows Operating System. This type of
systems consists a very high degree of human computer interaction. There are various types
of interactive system present in the current market scenario and the user population of this
type of devices is increasing day by day. User population is a big factor for the interactive
systems. The user population describes the total active user for a particular interactive
system. This total size of the user population affects the design of the interface of the
interactive system. Also, the user population is necessary to provide important propaganda
for the continued investment in the interactive systems.
In the early cases the common interactive system was command line systems. It was
able to tightly control the interaction between the computer and the human. The command
line based interactive system gave the second gen menu, form and dialog based interactive
system. A very good example of this 2nd gen interactive system is the microwave control
panel. In this report interaction mechanism of the microwave control panel will be described
briefly. To describe the interaction properly use cases considered in this report. Thus a brief
account of the considered use case will be given in this report. To understand the system
better a use case diagram will be provided in this report. Following the use cases an
evaluation methodology will be provided in this report which will describe the procedures to
be followed for the proper usability evaluation. In the next part of this report evolution of the
microwave control panel system will be described properly. In the further section of this
interactive system findings from the evaluation will be discussed in this report.

2USABILITY EVALUATION OF MICROWAVE CONTROL PANEL
Part 2: The use case diagram
The use case diagram developed is for the microwave control panel. The user
interaction includes insertion of food. After the user has inserted the food they can adjust the
temperature according to their need. The temperature can be increase and decreased by the
use of user interaction. Apart from this the user can update the time of the control panel and
can increase the time as needed.
Use case Description
Insert food Insert food function is used to insert the
food and perform the function on this.
According to the type of food the
microwave is set on the mode

3USABILITY EVALUATION OF MICROWAVE CONTROL PANEL
Decrease time This is used for adjusting the time within
the system. In case a food requires less time
with the help of this the user can reduce the
time.
Increase time Increase time is used to increase when the
user wants to increase the time.
Increase temperature Temperature of the food can be increased
with the use of this button. The user needs
to directly interact with the system.
Decrease temperature The temperature can be reduced as per the
requirement of the food.
Update time The time needs to be updated frequently as
per the need of the food.
Part Three: The evaluation methodology
It is very much important to measure the performance of the interactive system for the
user satisfaction and in this report the selected interactive system is the microwave control
panel. The interactive system is evaluated based on some key factors. This will also help to
determine the effectiveness of the selected interactive system. In this case the user must be
sensible enough so that he or she can handle the system in a proper way. As mentioned above
the key factor for evaluating the microwave control panel is the usability evaluation.
The usability evaluation of an interactive system is performed to determine the
efficiency, learnability, errors, memorability and the user satisfaction of the microwave
control panel. The efficiency of the device is also based on the tasks which are being

4USABILITY EVALUATION OF MICROWAVE CONTROL PANEL
performed by the users. In this case the user must be intelligent enough to operate the system
of the microwave control panel. Actually, the efficiency of a device measures the
completeness and accuracy with respective of the specified goal taken by the device user. The
users can perceive the efficiency of the device when they achieve their goals without giving
much effort. The efficiency of the microwave control panel is measured on a normal case
scenario. For evaluation of the efficiency, data of average operating time taken by the users is
taken for performing a particular operation.
To evaluate the learnability of the microwave control panel, first of all some group of
users will be selected. Then they will be instructed to perform a particular operation by using
the microwave control panel. When the group of users will perform the designated operation
their average time of performing the task will be recorded. Again, the same task will be
instructed to perform to that particular user group of user. This time again their average time
of performing the operation will be evaluated and it will be compared with the previous
average time taken by the users. From that data the learnability of the microwave control
panel can be evaluated.
Using the memorability evaluation it can be evaluated how easy is to remember the
using procedure of the microwave control panel. To perform the memorability evaluation it
need to be evaluate how easy it is for the users to perform a particular task without taking
some external help. To evaluate this, first a particular task will be performed by a group of
user and for the first time they will be instructed how to perform that particular task. In the
next time the memorability will be evaluated on the basis of whether those users are able to
perform the same task by their own. If they successfully performs the task then it will be
evaluated how easy it was for them to remember the procedure.

5USABILITY EVALUATION OF MICROWAVE CONTROL PANEL
Error is a big factor in the usability of an interactive system. In such of the cases error
generation by the system will be evaluated. With error generation, the occurrence interval of
the error and the degree of the error needs to be evaluated. While measuring the error
generated by the system, it need to be ensured that there no human error for which the system
error is generated. For evaluating the error generated by the system, the microwave control
paned needs to be operated in every single possible way and needs to be monitored whether
any error is occurring or not.
User satisfaction is also important to measure the usability of the interactive system.
The user satisfaction defines the comfort of the user and the acceptability while using an
interactive system. To measure the user satisfaction of the microwave control panel,
interview can be taken of the users. Through the interview it will be evaluated how comfort it
was for the users while using this interactive system. Also, the acceptability of the users of
this microwave control panel will be evaluated.
Part Four: The Evaluation
In this part of this report how the test subject is doing and the performance will be
evaluated on the basis of the above discussed evaluation methodology for the usability
evaluation. Actually, the evaluation is considered as the systematic determination of a merit
of the subject, significance and worth using criteria governed by some set of standards.
In the first case the efficiency of the microwave control panel is measured. Applying
the above evaluation procedure for measuring the efficiency it has been found that the
microwave control panel is very much effective for controlling all the functions of the
microwave. This control panel is mainly two types, one is the analogue control panel
interface and the second one is the digital control panel or the touch responsive control panel.
From the evaluation it has been assessed that both the interfaces are enough efficient to fulfil

6USABILITY EVALUATION OF MICROWAVE CONTROL PANEL
the general user needs. From the evaluation it has been assessed that most of the users are
preferring the touch responsive microwave control panel rather than the analogue control
panel as it was more efficient. As per the users while using the analogue control panel there
was delay between the pressing button and input taken by the machine while this type of
delay was not present in the digital control panel.
In the case of evaluation of the learnability the above discussed methodology is
applied and it has been assessed that the learnability of the microwave control panel is very
high. Almost every user in the test was able to use the microwave perfectly and the average
time of using the microwave for performing a specific type of task was decreased with each
of the round of usage. It has been assessed that in the first case a particular user taken around
45 seconds for performing a specific type of operation using the microwave control panel. In
the second time that same user taken around 30 seconds for performing the same task and in
the third time taken by that same user was around 25 seconds. From that data it can be seen
that time taken by the users for performing a particular microwave related operation the time
gradually decreased which indicated that the learnability of this microwave control panel is
high. In the current situation that particular user of the microwave takes around 20 seconds of
time. For the other operations related with the microwave control panel also decreased for
most of the users.
The next criteria for the usability evaluation of the microwave control panel was
memorability. From the results of the evaluation again the memorability of the microwave
control panel is actually high. It indicates that following the procedures for operating the
microwave through the control panel was very much easy. To perform the operation above
described methodology has been used. In this case most of the user of the microwave control
panel just required only one time demonstration of how to operate the microwave through the
control panel. In both the cases of analogue and digital type of control panel the memorability

7USABILITY EVALUATION OF MICROWAVE CONTROL PANEL
of the users remained same. 80 percent of the peoples were successfully memorised the
procedure of operating the microwave through the control panel. While 15 percent of the
users required one or two time of external help while using the microwave control panel.
Only 5 percent of the users failed to remember the actual procedure for using the microwave
control panel for performing a particular type of task. They needed a vast external help for
performing that particular task. Thus from the evaluation overall memorability of the
microwave control panel is high.
Error also need to be considered for the microwave control panel for a usability
evaluation. Using the above methodology, from the evaluation of the error it has been found
that the error rate of the microwave control panel is completely negligible. In some of the
minor cases the analogue control panel of the microwave did not provided correct output of a
particular input by the user which has been counted as an error. Though it was determined in
minor of the cases but still it has created problem for the users. The users of the digital
microwave control panel also reported some errors in the digital control panel. According to
most of the digital control panel users the main error they has been faced is with the touch
interface. In some minor cases they has reported that the touch interface of the control panel
was unresponsive for some while. Actually, this error case with the digital control panel
investigated further it has been found that the users who reported that the touch was
unresponsive was using the digital control panel with wet water. This was the main reason
behind the failure of the touch responsive control panel. Later, it was considered as the fault
of the user for which the error was occurring. Thus it has been assessed that the error rate of
the microwave, specially the error rate of the digital control panel was totally negligible.
User satisfaction is also considered for the evaluation of the microwave control panel.
For the evaluation of the microwave control panel the users of this control panel interviewed
properly. From the interview of those users it has been found that the microwave control

8USABILITY EVALUATION OF MICROWAVE CONTROL PANEL
panel is able to provide comfort to most of its users. The users who has been interviewed in
this case has stated that they were absolutely comfortable while interacting with the
microwave control panel. According to some of the users there was bit of difficulty while
using the analogue microwave control panel but for the digital control panel they absolutely
comfortable. Also, the users accepted this control panel greatly both for the analogue and
digital control panel. Thus it has been evaluated that the user satisfaction of the microwave
control panel is also high in this case.
Part 5: Finding of evaluation
After analyzing the evaluation it is observed that there is a need to understand the
working of microwave control panel. The function of microwave control panel is used to set
the direction for the foods set in the oven. After evaluation it can be stated that this are the
important part of a micro oven through which the user interacts with the oven. The
functionality of the microwave includes switching on the power, displaying the standby
mode, and selecting option for frozen items, for defrosting, for baking purposes for cooking
meat and rice. The user can interact with the help of this control panel. This interactive
system offers enough support towards the customer. There is a manual mode available that
allows the switch of the power and also allows to display show Standby option. There is an
up key that is used to display the show set time. With the help of press down key and up key
time can be decreased o increased. The user can set the time in the microwave and wait until
the system indicates the work completed. Apart from this there is an option provided by the
control panel towards the user about the option they want to select based on the food item
they wish to operate on. The user can choose among any of the options provided on the
control panel. With the heuristic evaluation the problems faced at each stage can be
understand clearly. It is important to address the problems associated with the working of
each buttons on the control panel. The main problem is faced when the user overheats the

9USABILITY EVALUATION OF MICROWAVE CONTROL PANEL
food item. There is a caution provided by the microwave about the maximum temperature
that can be used while using a system. The interactive system needs to be developed in such a
way that it does not causes any problem towards the system. Each buttons present over the
control panel plays a major role. However after evaluating the process of microwave it is
observed that microwave ovens function at high frequency and voltage waves, which can be
highly dangerous. Thus it is important to extreme care while working with the microwave
ovens. At the time of working the user needs to be aware of the container used. Apart from
this it is important to close all the coverings before performing the operation. Usability
evaluation helps in understanding the working of the control panel. Proper working with the
control panel is important to understand the working by the user. It is the responsibility of
each user to be careful while working with the system. The usability evaluation is a process
through the working can be understand properly. Each button generates a particular action
and the main source of current is converted to the DC current. The displaying keypad shows
the time required to perform the activity and also includes the importance of power. The
software of the control panel is written in C language and is accumulated with Kiel version 4
software. The main logic behind the software is used for easy understanding and editing. The
main parts of the software the MCU scans and also ensures proper b working of the seven
input switches, comprising vegetable (VEG), meat, rice, frozen (FRZ), bake, up and defrost
(DFR).

10USABILITY EVALUATION OF MICROWAVE CONTROL PANEL
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