Changes between Version 39 and Version 40 of CoreLibrary/UsabilityAnalysis

Timestamp:

10/22/12 16:57:10 (12 years ago)

Author:

pharms

Comment:

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CoreLibrary/UsabilityAnalysis

@@ -6 +6 @@
 As an example, you can think of the different tools of an office suite. Such usually provide a tool for writing documents and another one for creating presentation slides. With both tools, you may create a poster. Therefore, they both support conducting the same task. When doing the layout of the contents of the poster, both tools provide different mechanisms for doing so. Where the tool for writing documents supports the usage of text columns and images anchored on the page, the presentation tool directly allows laying out the elements using appropriate boxes. For many users, using the second variant is much more efficient and satisfying. Therefore, the presentation tool has a better usability for creating posters with respect to the mentioned users. In addition, another tool that is directly designed for creating posters may provide an even better usability.
 
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+= Usability Engineering =
 
-In software development processes, the users and their tasks should analysed to derive requirements for the software
+Usability should be considered throughout the whole software development process. For this, a broad variety of methods exists that can be used at distinct stages of the process. Applying such methods in the development process is referred to as usability engineering.
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+Most of the methods of usability engineering rely on a proper analysis of the application context. With an increasing size of the application context, such as a larger number of different users, the analysis becomes imprecise. This causes a decrease of the achievable usability for the individual user or a group of users. Furthermore, the users that are actually using the software as well as their way of using the software may differ from the expectations of an initial user analysis. This is because users very often use software also for tasks, for which is was not implemented. As an example, many posters nowadays are created using tools for screen presentations or writing documents as poster software is either rare or expensive.
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+= AutoQUEST and Usability Analysis =
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+AutoQUEST is capable of recording users while using a software for their tasks. Based on this recording, AutoQUEST provides tools for usability analysis. At the first step, these tools determine a model of the usage of a software. This model is a task tree that combines the individual user interactions to logical units. Furthermore, AutoQUEST is able to determine a model of the GUI of the software. Based on both models, AutoQUEST is capable of performing a usability analysis of the software. As an example, a task tree may contain a regularly repeated list of user interactions specific elements of the GUI. For most effective support for the user, these GUI elements should be colocated. If they are colocated can be checked using the GUI model.
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