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Usability Testing
AJE Consulting conducts usability testing to verify and improve
architecture and design decisions made during the development
phase.
Usability can be defined as the degree to which a given piece
of software assists the person sitting at the keyboard to
accomplish a task, as opposed to becoming an additional impediment
to such accomplishment. The broad goal of usable systems is
often assessed using several criteria:
- Ease of learning
- Retention of learning over time
- Speed of task completion
- Error rate
- Subjective user satisfaction
Methodologies for building usable systems have been introduced
and refined over the past fifteen or so years under the discipline
of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). HCI principles include
an early and consistent focus on end users and their tasks,
empirical measurements of system usage, and iterative development.
Much effort has been put into exploring cognitive models of
human behavior as it relates to computer usage, and developing
guidelines for screen layout and system dialogues. These are
predictive endeavors whose purpose is to assist the software
developer in the initial task analysis and system design.
But, just as comprehensive functional requirements and a
detailed design document do not by themselves guarantee that
a programmer's final code will be correct, so up-front usability
guidelines do not by themselves guarantee a usable end product.
In both cases a distinct validation process is required.
Usability testing is the process by which the human-computer
interaction characteristics of a system are measured, and
weaknesses are identified for correction. Such testing can
range from rigorously structured to highly informal, from
quite expensive to virtually free, and from time-consuming
to quick. While the amount of improvement is related to the
effort invested in usability testing, all of these approaches
lead to better systems.
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| AJE
Consulting Ltd :: 4646085 |
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