Applying the Usability Engineering Lifecycle in Tool Development VT SENRG Will Humphries & Kim Gausepohl 12/04/07 2:50-3:20PM

Presentation Objectives Share our experience integrating the usability engineering lifecycle into tool development Convince you that: –The inclusion of usability engineering will improve the overall SAKAI user experience –You can do it too! 2

Presentation Outline VT SAKAI Background Importance of Requirements Engineering Usability Engineering Lifecycle VT SENRG Project 3

VT Sakai Background Community Involvement –development –QA Mellon Award 2005 Pilot & 2006 Production –Usability complaints 4

Situational Analysis 5

6 Immediate project needs: Stakeholder group Grad student: Usability Grad student: Developer

Requirements Engineering 7 Figure 1: Increase in cost to fix or change software throughout the lifecycle Boehm, B. W. (1989). Verifying and validating software requirements and design specifications. In Software risk management (pp ): IEEE Press.

What is Usability? 8 the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in a specified context of use. ISO (1988).

Usability Engineering Lifecycle 9 Hix and Hartson (1993). Developing User Interfaces: Ensuring Usability Through Product and Process. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

SENRG Sakai Electronic Notebook for Research and Groupwork Motivation: Helpdesk requests High level goals: –replacement for paper lab and classroom notebooks –improved collaboration 10

Systems Analysis Stakeholder Group Formation –7 faculty from science, engineering, and humanities domains Ethnographic approaches –Interviews –Field Visits Stakeholder meeting to determine high level requirements and priorities 11

Interviews & Field Visits Example Interview Questions –What is purpose of notebook? –How do you measure the quality of a notebook? –How do you manage notebooks? –Who is responsible for the notebook? –What complaints do you have about your current use of notebooks? Field visits –Artifacts –Context of use

User Interaction Design Screen Mock-ups Individual stakeholder meetings –Obtain feedback on paper prototypes –Ask follow-up questions 13

Initial Screen Mock-Up 14

After Several Iterations 15

Prototype Development Development in RSF Interface development switched to XHTML FCKEditor used for text entry

Prototype Prototype screenshot here I’m waiting on a build at the end of the weekend 17

Evaluation Interactive Prototype 10 student participants –Engineering Benchmark tasks –Critical incidents –Time to complete task –Comments Qualitative survey for user satisfaction 18

Evaluation Results 19 Use evaluation to inform design

Post-test Interview Sampling of the negative 1.Feedback should be prominent at every stage to understand the task flow 2.Entering section name is not obvious 3.Use better labels Sampling of the positive 1.It is not tough to use. Its better than Scholar 2.This system is much better than Scholar 20

What’s Next? Design changes based on usability results Development of high priority features informed by faculty feedback 21

Lessons Learned Rapport with stakeholders is key Stakeholder involvement creates “buy- in” Conflicting requirements ~= conflicting stakeholders Start recruiting participants early, especially students 22

Contact Information Will Humphries Kim Gausepohl 23

References 24 Boehm, B. W. (1989). Verifying and validating software requirements and design specifications. In Software risk management (pp ): IEEE Press. Hix and Hartson (1993). Developing User Interfaces: Ensuring Usability Through Product and Process. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.