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| Thought Paper |
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Evaluation Methods in Usability Engineering |
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| Abstract |
With a majority of applications adopting web-browser-based interfaces, the importance of
usability engineering in the software industry is increasingly gaining momentum. The
evolution of usability testing labs is a pointer in this direction. However, in practice, it has
been observed that despite huge efforts made in developing user interfaces, very little
effort is actually devoted on evaluating user interfaces for their effectiveness and
efficiency.
The lack of a structured approach in ensuring user friendliness stems from the difficulty in
evolving a strategic approach to usability engineering at the organizational level. On the
high end, organizations can ensure optimum results by setting up a usability lab to capture
user actions and/or implement formal methods such as trees, transition diagrams or state
charts. However, this approach involves huge investments and rigorous software
engineering practices. On the other end, organizations can use informal methods in which
developers/testers act as users. While these informal methods are useful to some extent,
they do not produce tangible benefits.
This paper aims to present an overview of some recognized evaluation methods that can
help organizations adopt a structured approach to ensure usability by developing a
usability framework.
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