Tag: usability

Code4lib Day 1 Afternoon: Takeaways on Usability & Search

Once again, I didn’t take full notes on all the sessions, but some takeaways below.

  • Non-English searches should not suck.
  • Favour precision over recall on large-scale searching.
  • Develop measures of assessment in order to measure success.
  • Leverage the correlation between academic degree and type of materials used, and focus on discipline-related materials and authors in case of ambiguity.
  • If a user built-in interface doesn’t work, you can always put something on top.

Many of these sound like common sense, but not enough people do it.

See my other posts for notes on the presentations I wrote more on:

Code4lib Day 1: Kill the Search Button II – The Handheld Devices are Coming

by Michael Poltorak Nielsen, Statsbiblioteket/State and University Library, Aarhus, Denmark

Current Mobile Interaction Paradigm

You do a lot with your hands, everyday. Our hands are a really good tool, but currently, the handheld interaction is based on glass. That is you do functions by sliding your fingers, which means there is no feedback on what it does, i.e. it’s not intuitive.

Take a look at Pictures Under Glass: Transitional Paradigm dictated by technology, not human capabilities by Bret Victor.

An Alternative

  • direct manipulation
  • gesture driven
  • palpable
  • tactile

Smartphone Gestures

The near future may mean combining something like the Wiimote and the iPhone.

Mobile Projects

The idea was to build an HTML5 app that searches library data, favourites, view own items, renew, and request. Currently in beta, but to be published soon.

The search app can be augmented with gestures, gestures combined with multi-touch interactions.

Possible interactions with focus on

  • keyboard – typing
  • microphone speech
  • screen – touch, visuals
  • camera – pattern, movement
  • accelerometer – acceleration
  • gyroscope – rotation
  • compass  – direction
  • GPS – movement, position

Gestures

Might include simple ones using accelerometer data, including

  • tilt
  • flip
  • turn
  • rotate
  • shake
  • throw

The problem is that gestures are only really supported by Firefox, and partially supported by Chrome. Thus, it was decided that development would move to the native iPhone app environment with gestures, and HTML5 web app without gestures (but possibly later when supported). Features that are implemented include:

  • Restart search – face down
  • Scroll – tilt up and down
  • Switch views – tilt
  • Request items – touch and tilt left
  • Favourites – touch and tilt right

Check out the demo:

Challenges

  • no standard mobile gestures
  • gesture maybe individual
  • gesture may not be appropriate at all
  • sophisticated gestures are hard to code
  • Objective-C

Usability Testing

Last week (was it really just last week?), I did my first usability test and I thought it went well enough, but there are of course improvements needed.  I looked up some resources (which I will put up on a later date), but while there is a general outline, no resource can give you specifics on how to conduct a usability test for a particular site.

Methodology

  • 5 participants, 1-2 from each user group
  • Each participant was given the choice of using a PC or MAC.
  • Each participant was given a scenario of working on assignments by themselves without facilitators to help with the task itself.
  • Participants were given 5 tasks to do, presented one at a time.
  • Participants were asked to voice their thoughts and were asked questions about their process during a task, after a task, and/or after all tasks were completed.
  • Each session was recorded using video, audio, and screencapture programs.

Results Analysis
Results were compiled for completion rate, but no other metrics were found useful. For example, time completion did not work in this case since users were asked to voice their thoughts and some did so very thoroughly, while others did very little.

Most of the analysis then was drawing conclusions based on behavioural trends and repeated comments made by users.

Results
The results might have been as expected. Users tended to be either novice or expert users, which may seem fairly obvious, and 1 of 2 types:

  • selective user: tends to look over things carefully, choosing that which seems to best fit what he/she wants. Unlikely to click on unfamiliar things.
  • explorative user: tends to click on the first link that looks like it might be what they are looking for. Does not mind making mistakes. More likely to click on unfamiliar things.

Recommendations were made about the site in an attempt to make the site user-friendly to both types of users, and to ensure both types navigate the site as it was designed.

A number of recommendations were also made revolving around content, as there were numerous content issues and content is not taken care of by the developers (which includes me).

Reflections & Improvements
Overall, I thought the sessions went fairly well. There were a couple of improvements that we implemented in the middle of the study. Although in a more academic-based research study, this might be considered taboo, we thought it would produce more useful results.

Some improvements we made:

  • printed copy of tasks
  • added to script that task completion is user determined (not determined by facilitator)
  • made sure to clear browser cache for every session (browsers can be set to do so automatically of course)
  • minor rewording of tasks to make examples as unambiguous as possible

For the next usability test, further improvements can be made:

  • more context for scenario to give participants appropriate perspective

I think it is also very valuable to have a second facilitator since each facilitator tends to catch/see and focus on different aspects of the user experience, so each will contribute to the questioning of the participant.

Conclusion
The usability test was very valuable in seeing whether the design and organization worked for our users.  It also helped to identify various problems and what’s better, how we might improve them (as some tasks were purposefully chosen because they might be problematic elements on the site).  Some improvements of the site will depend on others, but hopefully, the results of the study will convince them that the improvements need to be made.

Card Sort Reflections & Analysis

In July, I had done a card sort study for the section of the website I was helping to redesign.  Particularly since the new portal I’ve been working on doesn’t have as clear cut categories, we decided to do another card sort.

Reflections
Just a Few Number of Sessions worked fine.  The first time we did the study, we did 5 group sessions and found that we began finding the same results, especially after refining it the first time.  We only did 4 group sessions this time and we still found after the 3rd session, we found nothing new (though that may have had something to do with the make-up of the 4th group).

Timing was an issue. Although it was somewhat an issue the first time too (because it was summer), but this time was almost worse because I had less time between advertising and carrying out the study.  And, although there were a lot more people on campus, the study was carried out around midterms.  Thus, it was even more difficult to schedule people into the same times.

Advertising online worked 100x better whether it was e-mailing certain mailing lists, posting on the psychology department’s list of surveys, or e-mailing previously interested people who’s schedule just didn’t work with ours for the first study versus posting paper posters around campus.

Getting people to think in the right mind frame was again an issue. I won’t go into this too much though it was interesting that I found students to have less problems with this than those who worked on campus.  I will not even begin to theorize why particularly since that was a trend over only 9 groups of participants.

Participants can be a great source. As we were doing another closed card sort, we had pre-set categories, but one of the participants in the first group came up with a much better categorization by adding a couple of categories, while removing one, creating less ambiguous categorization.

Analysis
As I didn’t write about this last time, I thought I’d write a little bit about analysis this time (I used the same method).  After gathering the results (simply by writing down the numbers of the sticky notes), I entered them into xSort, a free MAC card sort statistical program.  The program also allows sessions for participants to enter data, but is designed for individuals rather than groups, so I opted to put in the results myself and using it primarily for analysis.

Statistical Analysis
The program provided the standard distance table and cluster tree results.  The cluster tree options included single, average, and complete linkages.  From what I have read of the literature, it seems as if using average linkage trees is the most common and I did find that single linkage gave many more branches (and generally more groups too), whereas complete linkages gave few groups but also many more outliers when using a cut off in the standard range of 04.-0.6.  Average linkage gives a good balance between the two, but of course, I did not simply take the cluster tree and turn that into a new IA.

Subjective Analysis
During the study, I had also taken a lot of notes on labels that participants found problematic and their suggestions.  I also took notes on item categorization that participants found difficult to put into a single category, which was generally reflected in the cluster tree as well by tending to be the outliers or items that were not categorized.

Using the Results
Using the average link cluster tree, I used that as a basis for an IA. Many of the problematic labels identified in participants’ comments were renamed to better reflect the content that a link would point to, which also helped putting them into the right category.  One link we ended up never putting into a category and decided to work it into the design outside of the categories that we had created.  This version of the IA was then put forward as a draft which will hopefully see little change before the “final” version is made for the portal.

Card Sort Methodology

So recently, I’ve been working on a mini-usability design study by asking users to do a card sort. In the process, I found some interesting tidbits.

What’s a Card Sort?
For those who don’t know what a card sort is, you basically put ideas (i.e. possible links to pages) on index cards or sticky notes and ask people (usually in a group) to sort them into categories, either existing ones you provide or ones that they name after.

Number of People to Test
Interestingly, I found that some articles suggested 25-30 people, but according to Nielson‘s correlation study, 15 is enough and after 20, it’s not worth the resources.

Card Sort Methodology
Open-sort vs. Closed-sort: We decided to use a close sort (categories are pre-determined) since we had already created a proposed information architecture (i.e. navigation structure).
Group vs. Individual: I had originally planned to do individual sessions since that would be more flexible, but J. (a coworker) has read studies about how these sorts of exercises work better in a group. I have read in various articles that group card sorts is the preferred method, so that made sense.
Silent vs. not: J. also suggested a silent card sort, which really did affect the group dynamic. I could see that even when silent there were people who were more assertive than others and that during the discussion that followed, those people were definitely more opinionated as well. So, I’m glad we did it as a silent sort.

Reflections
Scheduling was definitely much more time consuming than I had thought it would be. And trying to find faculty was the most difficult. Perhaps due to the incentive that we provided ($10 for 30 mins), we had plenty of student volunteers, especially grads (probably because they were around whereas undergrads were less likely to be as it’s between the two summer terms). For faculty, our hardest-to-get group, personal e-mails were definitely necessary! (and from someone they know).

Getting people to think in the right mind frame was also an interesting task.  A number of people who participated kept thinking about the design. Although it brings up interesting points which are helpful while we design a new site, some of it was irrelevant. Some kept thinking that it would be the home page, but no… it is not. They got the idea that what they saw was definitely going to be on the website, but that’s not true either. It got a bit frustrating at times, because I would basically say, “yes, good point, but let’s focus on the task at hand” (which was the card sort itself and naming the categories).  Most of the time it worked, but with one or two people… somehow that didn’t. They were so focused on “this is what and how I would like to see the website to be”, so I had to repeat more than once that it’s not the home page, just a single page somewhere. I got around it by turning my open questions into closed questions, but man… argumentative people can definitely change the group dynamics and totally veer the discussion in a totally different direction. Okay… apologies… </rant> But I think it brings up the important point that having a good mediator/facilitator is very important. I honestly think that my coworker would have done a better job than I did, but ah well, you do what you can.

Backup plans are a must-have! What if something goes wrong? Terrible on my part, I know, I did not really think about it before the actual sessions took place. What do you if someone doesn’t show up? What if more people suddenly show up? Does it matter to your study? I decided that for our purposes, if one person give or take in a group wasn’t a big deal, but definitely something to think about next time. Making sure you have all needed materials and back-up materials if things break down is also another much needed consideration.

Another Online Resource
Finally, there were a lot of good online resources. In particular, Spencer & Warfel’s Guide is quite comprehensive.