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As with other quality objectives, it is necessary to set and evaluate measurable targets for usability, and to identify and rectify usability defects. The presentation will explain how this can be achieved within the frame work of user centred design, and how MUSiC methods can be used to specify and evaluate usability requirements. The approach described is consistent with emerging international standards for usability and software quality.
Nigel is now project manager of the European projects: INUSE (Information Engineering Usability Support Centres) and RESPECT (Requirements Engineering and Specification in Telematics). These projects have set up a network of European Usability Support Centres to produce a common set of methods for user centred design and to distribute explanatory material on usability to European industry.
Nigel participates in several international standards groups, and in addition to contributing to ISO 13407 (Human-centred design process for interactive systems), he is editor of ISO 9241-11 (Guidance on usability), ISO 14598-1 (Evaluation of software quality - General guide) and ISO/IEC 9126-1 (Software quality characteristics and metrics).
Process
These standards cover the planning, specification and evaluation of usability, and provide authority for incorporating usability into the design process.
Nigel is now project manager of the European projects: INUSE (Information Engineering Usability Support Centres) and RESPECT (Requirements Engineering and Specification in Telematics). These projects have set up a network of European Usability Support Centres to produce a common set of methods for user centred design and to distribute explanatory material on usability to European industry.
Nigel participates in several international standards groups, and in addition to contributing to ISO 13407 (Human-centred design process for interactive systems), he is editor of ISO 9241-11 (Guidance on usability), ISO 14598-1 (Evaluation of software quality - General guide) and ISO/IEC 9126-1 (Software quality characteristics and metrics).
Ms. Brummel is the founding director of CITA and Chair, Council on Accessible Technology. CITA is a model governmentwide demonstration and technical resource center that assists Federal agencies meet mission-related information technology requirements for equal access by people with disabilities. CITA is the government's program office for technical leadership in universal access through collaboration with National Information Infrastructure (NII) planners. The Council is comprised of representatives from 30 agencies and serves as a vehicle to advance an NII that is fully accessible.
Ms. Youngblood is a major contributor to the Accessible Software guidelines being developed by the Assistive Technology Center team for adoption department-wide. The Assistive Technology Center provides support services on all aspects of accessible information infrastructure implementation including: individual needs assessment, demonstration of enhanced technologies typically used by people with disabilities, and guidance to application developers, procurement officials, and contractors on accessibility requirements and how to achieve access performance accountability.
Elizabeth Buie, a member of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society's HCI Standards Committee, will talk about the current international, national and military efforts regarding HCI/GUI standards. She will give some hints for tailoring standards to projects and will offer some cautionary advice about what not to expect from standards and guidelines.
After obtaining the M.S. degree in Systems Management (Information Systems concentration) from the University of Southern California, Bill Hefley was a Senior Member of the Technical Staff at the SoftwareEngineering Institute. During his nine years at the SEI, he contributed to the SEI's mission of improving the state of the practice in software engineering through activities in technology transition, software and usability process improvement, computer security, and advanced information dissemination techniques. His prior work spans software engineering and human-computer interaction in a number of domains, ranging from the factory floor to banking applications to managing constellations of spacecraft. He holds a BS in Computer Science and Political Science and a BA in Pyschology, and was a founding editor of ACM's interactions magazine and was chair of the 1993 ACM conference on Intelligent User Interfaces.
After obtaining the M.S. degree in Systems Management (Information Systems concentration) from the University of Southern California, Bill Hefley was a Senior Member of the Technical Staff at the SoftwareEngineering Institute. During his nine years at the SEI, he contributed to the SEI's mission of improving the state of the practice in software engineering through activities in technology transition, software and usability process improvement, computer security, and advanced information dissemination techniques. His prior work spans software engineering and human-computer interaction in a number of domains, ranging from the factory floor to banking applications to managing constellations of spacecraft. He holds a BS in Computer Science and Political Science and a BA in Pyschology, and was a founding editor of ACM's interactions magazine and was chair of the 1993 ACM conference on Intelligent User Interfaces.
Nigel is now project manager of the European projects: INUSE (Information Engineering Usability Support Centres) and RESPECT (Requirements Engineering and Specification in Telematics). These projects have set up a network of European Usability Support Centres to produce a common set of methods for user centred design and to distribute explanatory material on usability to European industry.
Nigel participates in several international standards groups, and in addition to contributing to ISO 13407 (Human-centred design process for interactive systems), he is editor of ISO 9241-11 (Guidance on usability), ISO 14598-1 (Evaluation of software quality - General guide) and ISO/IEC 9126-1 (Software quality characteristics and metrics).
A real life example of savings as a result of usability testing will be presented. The bottom line is that application of usability engineering techniques can increase productivity and save costs.
In 1994, Laura received the Federal Applications Medal of Excellence (FAME) award for her participation in the development of an information retrieval system prototype (IRSP). She was also awarded a Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper scholarship for her contribution in the use and application of information technology for better government operations. In 1995, as an IRSP team member, Laura received a Hammer award from Vice-President Al Gore's National Performance Review for re-inventing government.
In addition to her commitment to getting usability engineering into the government arena, Laura designs and evaluates interfaces, conducts usability testing, develops evaluation methodologies and performs system analysis and system design. She is a graduate of Hood College and recently completed an M.S. in Computer Science at The Johns Hopkins University.
She has also been Project Leader of an European project in the field of software technologies, MAPI (Music Assisted Process Improvement), due to introduce efficient and effective tool-based usability metrics and measurements in several large European industries and banks.
Hix has done extensive teaching and consulting with a variety of industrial and government organizations in the area of user interface development for more than 15 years. She is co-author, with H. Rex Hartson, of a popular book for practitioners entitled "Developing User Interfaces: Ensuring Usability through Product and Process" published by John Wiley and Sons in 1993.
Hix received a BS in Mathematics from Emory University, Atlanta; and a Master's in Information Systems and a PhD in Computer Science and Applications from Virginia Tech. She is a member of Sigma Xi Research Honor Society, Upsilon Pi Epsilon Computer Science Honor Society, and IEEE, ACM, and the Human Factors Society.
Computer systems built in the days of mainframes are now two paradigm shifts away from current technology. Efforts to migrate legacy systems to client-server architecture (desktop PC’s replacing "dumb" terminals) must now also cope with web-based, net-centric technology.(desktop PC’s running applications within web browsers, getting data from web-servers.).
The expectations of users today are far different from those which guided design when legacy systems were created. And many of the original interface designs were heavily influenced by the requirements of obsolete technology.
Even the ways in which organizations operate have changed. Thus, re-engineering legacy software is not only a matter of accommodating to a new technical environment, but a new work environment as well. This presentation will discuss the problems of renovating old-style software and creating a user interface appropriate to current organizational environments.
Mr. Levi will then discuss some of the organizational issues behind these evaluation efforts -- how did they come about, what foundation was required, and where is BLS likely to be headed.
Mr. Levi is co-author of "A Heuristic Evaluation of a World Wide Web Prototype" (interactions Magazine, July/August 1996) and "Usability Testing of World Wide Web Sites" (accepted for publication by Software Development Magazine.) He has developed and taught numerous classes and seminars on user interface design, programming strategies, languages, and operating systems. Mr. Levi has spoken on the topic of usability testing and the World Wide Web at several government and professional gatherings. He will be leading a workshop on this topic at the ACM CHI'97 conference in late March.
Jane holds Masters degrees in Human Factors from Loughborough University in England, and in Computer Science from Boston University's Metropolitan College. She is past chair of the Human Factors Society's New England Chapter and of the Human Factors Society's Computer Systems Technical Group. She has published a number of journal articles, conference papers and reports on user interface design and on collaborative tool evaluation.
Then we'll concentrate on two of those techniques -- expert reviews and usability testing. I'll present a critical review of research from the last several years in which usability specialists have compared techniques that don't require users (such as expert reviews) with usability testing. The research brings out the strengths and weaknesses and the relative costs and benefits of each technique. Both are useful, but they give us different types of information. We'll end by considering ways of implementing each technique for maximum benefit at least cost.
With Joseph Dumas of AIR, Ginny is co-author of A Practical Guide to Usability Testing (Ablex, 1993). She is a member of the editorial boards of four journals and has published numerous papers and book chapters on documentation and on usability. In 1995, the professional society of computer documentation specialists (ACM SIGDOC) honored Ginny with its Rigo award, given annually to an individual for significant contributions to the profession. Ginny is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College and earned her Ph.D. in Linguistics at Harvard University.
We employed several techniques to learn, assess, and evaluate ISYS including reading the documentation, performing over 30 field visits, attending training sessions, getting hands-on experience with ISYS, and administering the Questionnaire for User Interaction Satisfaction (QUIS) to 332 personnel. Based on our findings, we proposed 28 short term recommendations (low effort, high payoff) to improve the existing system while the new system is being developed. NISYS, the next generation ISYS, will run on PCs in a windows environment. The NISYS design uses visualization techniques to display youth record overviews in a single screen and to select the best programs for a youth. Worker-specific screens are used to facilitate task scheduling and document management. Supporting user workflow was the driving force behind the NISYS design and helped stimulate a major document re-engineering effort.
He regularly gives conference keynote speeches and public talks on "Human values and the future of technology" and "Relate- Create-Donate: Applying educational technology for the post-TV generation." Dr. Shneiderman's professional talks and courses cover user interface design, information visualization, and educational technology. He organizes an annual satellite television presentation on "User Interface Strategies" seen by thousands of professionals since 1987.
Dr. Shneiderman is the author of Software Psychology: Human Factors in Computer and Information Systems (1980) and Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction (1987, second edition 1992, third edition 1997), Addison-Wesley Publishers, Reading, MA. His 1989 book, co- authored with Greg Kearsley, Hypertext Hands-On!, contains a hypertext version on two disks. It was the world's first commercial electronic book and pioneered the highlighted embedded link. This concept was part of the Hyperties hypermedia system, now produced by Cognetics Corp., Princeton Junction, NJ.
Dr. Shneiderman has co-authored two textbooks, edited three technical books, and published more than 180 technical papers and book chapters. His 1993 edited book Sparks of Innovation in Human-Computer Interaction collects 25 papers from ten years of research at the University of Maryland. This collection includes Dr. Shneiderman's seminal paper on direct manipulation, a term he coined in 1981 to describe the graphical user interface design principles: visual presentation of objects and actions combined with pointing techniques to accomplish rapid incremental and reversible operations.
Ben Shneiderman has been on the Editorial Advisory Boards of nine journals including the newly formed ACM Transactions on Computer- Human Interaction and the ACM Interactions. He edits the Ablex Publishing Co. book series on "Human-Computer Interaction." He has consulted and lectured for many organizations including Apple, AT&T, Citicorp, GE, Honeywell, IBM, Intel, Library of Congress, NASA, and university research groups.
Ben Shneiderman received his BS from City College of New York in 1968, his PhD from State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1973. He received an Honorary Doctorate of Science from the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada in 1996 and was elected as a Fellow of the Association for Computing (ACM) in 1997.