TP034951 UC3F1805SE CT035-3-3-HCIAU

Name : Parveen a/l Narayanan

TP No : TP034951
Intake Code : UC3F1805SE
Tutorial : T3
Module Code : CT035-3-3-HCIAU
Module Name : HCI and Usability
Title : Essay Title (Usability Evaluation)
Lecturer Name : Ms. Aida Zamnah binti Zainal Abidin
Hand in Date : 3rd December 2018

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Table of Contents

1.0 Usability Evaluation – Parveen (TP034951) ............................................................................ 3

1.1 Usability ................................................................................................................................ 3

1.2 Importance of Usability Evaluation ...................................................................................... 3

1.3 Usability Goals...................................................................................................................... 4

1.3.1 Efficiency ....................................................................................................................... 5

1.3.2 Learnability .................................................................................................................... 5

1.4 Design Principle .................................................................................................................... 6

1.4.1 Design Guidelines (Learnability) ................................................................................... 7

1.4.2 Design Guidelines (Efficiency)...................................................................................... 8

2.0 References ................................................................................................................................. 9

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1.0 Usability Evaluation – Parveen (TP034951)

1.1 Usability

Usability is a fairly new concept in relation to the interaction between computers and
their user-human and the machines software some of our brightest minds have developed.
Design, philosophy, cognitive psychology, and ergonomics all play a role in understanding
usability, but you don’t need to be an expert in any of these fields (Dynomapper.com, 2018).

Simply put, usability is all about how effectively your site of software is designed, and
how happy your users are. It’s not quite as clear-cut all that of course, as usability is the
combination of factors, including ease of learning, intuitive design, efficiency of use,
satisfaction, memorability, and the rate of severity errors (Dynomapper.com, 2018).

1.2 Importance of Usability Evaluation

Conducting usability evaluations is a crucial step in taking your site to the next level
when it comes to reaching your target market and getting ahead of your competition. We have all
experienced at least one site where the layout made no sense to you, you couldn’t find anything
you were looking for (even if you knew the content was available on that site), and you kept
getting errors or unnecessary redirects. And chances are, every time you came across a site like
that, you decide to move on to the next option on your search engine’s results page
(Dynomapper.com, 2018).

Usability evaluations allow you to minimize and very nearly eliminate the possibility of
that happening when visitors view your site by showing you where your design, categorization,
and layout is lacking. It gives you a better understanding of how your target market think, and
therefore shows you how best to develop and optimize your site (Dynomapper.com, 2018).

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1.3 Usability Goals

Usability goals is very important to meet user expectations in every systems or

applications. Before heading off to that objectives, usability refers to a product however is
important to any items which characterizes the quality, efficiency, effect vines, and fulfilment of
specific item. The reason of significance of convenience is to choose whether the client will
return to utilize that specific system (Jacob Nielsen, 2012).

According to (Jacob Nielsen, 2012), discussed 5 quality components: -

1. Errors

Errors refer to the context to help user to avoid any kind of doing unwanted action accidentally
or undesirable condition when performing task.

2. Memorability

Memorability refers to how easy a system is to be remembered by the user once learned which
means user should not need to re-learn the same thing again and again when using the system.

3. Efficiency

Efficiency refers to the way a system can support user in carrying out task which makes user to
be able to perform task quickly

4. Learnability

Learnability refers to how easy a system is learned and use since the user wanted to get started
right away and become competent at carrying out task with much lesser effort.

In the proposed solution, the mobile application promoted Petrosains Kuala Lumpur will
be developed. Petrosains is a science discovery center which is located in Kuala Lumpur.
Currently, there is no mobile applications available for Petrosains Kuala Lumpur. Because of
that, the researchers could not identify what the main problems are. For the new mobile

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application, the researchers will choose “Learnability”, and “Efficiency” as the usability goals of
the system (Martin Christensen, n.d.).

1.3.1 Efficiency
Another factor to make this application to meet the usability evaluation is efficiency of
the system. We can assume that the users never use this application before because they most
likely to use this application when they are visiting Petrosains Kuala Lumpur. Therefore, the
system must provide efficiency for users to perform their operations and complete their task. For
example, the search feature can be added to the system, so the users do not need to search certain
topic manually from the list. By improving the efficiency, the application can also achieve
effectiveness. Besides that, consistent design can also help improving the efficiency of the
application (Usability, 2013).

1.3.2 Learnability
Since Petrosains is a science discovery center, it can be considered that most people
would only go to this place once or twice a year. Besides that, most of the visitors are children
with their parents. Children which is categorized as novice users and some parents can be
categorized as novice or knowledge intermittent users. This is where “Learnability” plays it part.
There is a high percentage for them to no understand a complex application and most of them
never use the application before, so the proposed solution needs to be developed as simple and
interactive as possible for the children to use to complete their tasks or operations. For example,
minimalist design and colour representation can help them to learn how to use the application
faster.

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1.4 Design Principle

The principles of design help the designer to arrange all elements in the page layout and
how to connect between one page to another page (Interaction Design Foundation, 2018).
Therefore, these guidelines must be followed to ensure the proposed application to meet the
usability goals. Based on (Jacob Nielsen, 2013), there are 10 heuristic principles for user
interface design offered by Jacob Nielsen which will be discussed below: -

1. Visibility of system status

Visibility of system status means that the system will have to always keep informing their users
about the current state through feedback within reasonable time. For example, when uploading
file to the website, it must show the progress bar of that process to inform user that the file is
being uploaded and it will take some time to finish.

2. Match between system and the real world

The system should use the user’s language, through words, phrases, or concepts, so that users
can easily understand what operations they should choose to complete their task. For example, to
delete something, it can be represented by using trash bin.

3. User control and freedom

User control and freedom means that the system enables the user to easily manage when they are
mistakenly pressed wrong button. It gives the user ability to go back to previous page or undo
what they have done.

4. Consistency and standards

The system must be built as consistent as possible and it must follow the existing standard in
order for user to easily locate what functions that they want to search. For example, the menu
functions are always located at the top left on every page and the icon always shown at the left
side to identify the text next to it.

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1.4.1 Design Guidelines (Learnability)

 Match between system and real world

This is very important for the proposed solution as it will use the user’s language which is
English. The reason why it will be using English is because most of the visitors are from
local citizens and tourists, so using this language is the best choice to solve this problem.
Besides that, since the application will be developed for education for children, some
unique and simple icons will be used to represent some of the functions to make it
interactive.

 Consistency and standards

The system should also enhance its consistency to make it to look nice and make it
attractive for the users. Besides that, the standards still must be followed to not confuse
the users when doing their tasks. If the system is not consistent enough, the users would
likely to be not interested in using the application.

 Visibility
Visibility is one of design principle which was introduced by Donald Norman. Visibility
means to show all the functions very clearly to be seen by the users once they come to
that page. This can help a lot for novice users to know what they should do in that page.
The project is considered bad if the functions are out of sight, so it makes the users
having difficulty in finding functions.

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1.4.2 Design Guidelines (Efficiency)

 Help and documentation

Sometimes, a little documentation is also important in the system, since the users of the
application will be most likely novice users. Although it seems very simple, but this
design principle will help them a lot when performing their tasks. In the proposed
solution, this principle can be applied in the registration form to show the simple
description or correct format on how to key in their details.

 Flexibility and efficiency of use

Because of the system will be used by novice to intermediate users, it is better if the
system can improve its efficiency and flexibility to help the users completing their tasks
faster. In the proposed application, one simple way to improve this area is to create a
menu bar to cover all the topics inside and search functions to find specific functions
inside the system.

 Affordance

The proposed system also needs to apply affordance principle, because it can improve the
user experience of the system. Novice users will not spend their time figuring what the
functions are. Affordance principle can help users identifying the function without the
needs of documentation.

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2.0 References

1. Garenne Bigby. 2018. How to Perform a Usability Evaluation. [ONLINE] Available at:
https://dynomapper.com/blog/19-ux/427-how-to-perform-a-usability-evaluation.
[Accessed 02 December 2018].

2. Nielsen Norman Group. 2018. Usability 101: Introduction to Usability. [ONLINE]

Available at: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-101-introduction-to-usability/.
[Accessed 02 December 2018].

3. 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design | Design Principles FTW. 2018. 10
Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design | Design Principles FTW. [ONLINE]
Available at: https://www.designprinciplesftw.com/collections/10-usability-heuristics-
for-user-interface-design. [Accessed 02 December 2018].

4. Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs. 2018. With Measurable Usability Goals – We All
Score | Usability.gov. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.usability.gov/get-
involved/blog/2013/09/measurable-usability-goals.html. [Accessed 02 December 2018].

5. Usability Evaluation Methods | Usability Body of Knowledge. 2018. Usability

Evaluation Methods | Usability Body of Knowledge. [ONLINE] Available at:
https://www.usabilitybok.org/usability-evaluation-methods. [Accessed 02 December
2018].

6. Usability Evaluation. 2018. Usability Evaluation. [ONLINE] Available at:

http://www.usabilityhome.com/. [Accessed 02 December 2018].