GENDER FACTOR ON THE USABILITY OF INTERACTIVE APPLICATIONS
“ Human-computer interaction is a discipline concerned with the design, evaluation and implementation of interactive computing systems for human use and with the study of major phenomena surrounding them. ”
Communication Design has a wide coverage such as animation, web design, graphic design, game design etc.. This wide coverage and also to be used by nearly all people, bring out some problems to design. Creating different interfaces for each product is the general way of solving design problems. People who are going to use the product and their basic information’s are the main points of creating interfaces. Interface design is the most important step of a Design. An interface design must be usable for the users. The ISO defines usability as “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, 1998].
If there are some problems with our interface, some important problems may come out. How can we find and solve these problems? There are some ways to check the usability of a interactive design.
Qualitative research is used to determine user characteristics, goals, and context of use. User can be classified according to their age, experience, educational level or gender. I have picked the Gender Factor for my usability testing project and the end analysis. 5 male students and 5 female students.
As I picked, the Gender factor on a usability of an interactive applications, now its time to choose what interactive program to test. A chat program, a helpdesk control system or what? The interactive application, which I want to check, must be something that is using during everyday life. An interactive application that everybody has used.. I choose the ‘online flight booking system of Turkish airlines’.
Gender factor on the usability of an interactive application, how can we find this? There is some usability testing methods.
• Thinking Aloud: Test users verbalise thoughts while performing test tasks.
• Co-Discovery: Two test users explore an interface together. Insight is gained from their conversation
while performing test tasks.
• Formal Experiments: Controlled experiments, measurements, and statistical analysis.
• Query Techniques: Interviews and questionnaires.
• Observational Studies: Observations and anecdotal evidence are collected from a small number of users working on their own taks in their natural environment over a longer period.
Thinking Aloud is the testing method that I will use for my project. Because with this method finds many usability problems, finds why they occur (process data), usable early in development process, requires little facilitator expertise. But also there are some negative details with this method, the most important one is thinking aloud slows users down.
And now How to do this usability testing?
The Thinking Aloud Method ask users to tell you : what they are trying to do, things they read, questions that arise in their mind, things they find confusing, decisions they make.
Test Facilitator’s Role: Spontaneous comments from the user are best. If the user stops talking aloud, encourage them to keep up the flowing commentary with neutral, unbiased prompts: non-committal “uh huh”, “Can you say more?”, “Please tell us what you are doing now?”, “I can’t hear what you are saying”, “What are you thinking right now?”.
The Test Plan main section headings: Purpose, problem statement, user profile, method (Test Design), task list, test environment, data to be collected, Content of Report.
Analysis and Final Report, 10 Users (5 males and 5 females) will try to book a ticket on www.thy.com . I will record every user when they try to book. During this booking period, I will ask some special questions to the testing users for to understand what they think. After recording all booking periods, I will try to find the common details with males and females. Timing, common mistakes, number of achieved users, number of failed users etc. After all these analysis, I will write a final report, which is around 1000 words.
Kaynakça:
[Human Computer Interaction Lecture Notes, Version of 27 May 2008, Ao.Univ.-Prof. Dr. Keith Andrews].
[ ACM SIGCHI Curricula for Human-Computer Interaction ]
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Jeffrey Rubin; Handbook of Usability Testing; Wiley, 1994. ISBN 0471594032 (com, uk) [Rubin, 1994]
Presents a step-by-step approach to usability testing in today's fast-paced industrial production environment, where reducing time to market has become a prerequisite for survival. Contains chapter coverage for each of the six stages including numerous examples and case studies. Provides information on the politics and human elements of testing within an organization. Features plenty of inside tips and tricks to help ease the testing process.
Keith Andrews [1996]. Browsing, Building, and Beholding Cyberspace, PhD thesis, Graz University of Technology, Austria. http://ftp.iicm.tugraz.at/pub/keith/phd/andrews-1996-phd. pdf. New Approaches to the Navigation, Construction, and Visualisation of Hypermedia on the Internet. It includes many details about ‘Thinking Aloud Method’ which is one of the methods of usability testing.
Beckwith, L. and Burnett, M. Gender: An important factor in end-user programming environments?, In Proc. Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing Languages, IEEE (2004), 107-114.
A human-centric issue that has not been considered in the design of end-user programming environments is whether gender differences exist that are important to the design of these environments. Ignoring this issue would miss the opportunity of enhancing the effectiveness of end-user programmers by incorporating appropriate mechanisms to support gender-associated differences in decision making, learning, and problem solving. This paper takes a first step toward building a foundation for investigating this issue by surveying gender difference literature from five domains with an eye toward possible implications for end-user programming. We present a taxonomy of this literature, and derive a number of specific issues for each element of the taxonomy (stated as hypotheses). This foundation provides a starting point for organized investigations into issues that may be important for making breakthroughs in the effectiveness of end-user programmers.
De Angeli, A. and Bianchi-Berthouze, N. Proceedings of Gender and Interaction, Real and Virtual Women in a Male World Workshop, Venice, May 23, (2006).
Gender HCI investigates ways in which attributes of software (or even hardware) can interact with gender differences. As with all of HCI, Gender HCI is a highly interdisciplinary area. Findings from fields such as psychology, computer science, marketing, neuroscience, education, and economics strongly suggest that males and females problem solve, communicate, and process information differently. Gender HCI investigates whether these differences need to be taken into account in the design of software and hardware.
Cassell, J. Genderizing HCI, MIT Media Lab, (1998).
Genderizing Human Computer Interaction, includes information about Human and computer interaction. Gender factor on human computer interaction and the instances about this factor.
Apple Computer [1992]. Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines. Addison Wesley. ISBN 0201622165 (com, uk).
http://devworld.apple.com/techpubs/mac/pdf/HIGuidelines.pdf.
Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines describes the way to create products that optimize the interaction between people and Macintosh computers. It explains the whys and hows of the Macintosh interface in general terms and specific details.
Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines helps you link the philosophy behind the Macintosh interface to the actual implementation of interface elements. Examples from a wide range of Macintosh products show good human interface design, including individual and iterative examples. These examples are accompanied by descriptions and discussions of why to follow the guidelines. This book also contains examples of how not to do human interface design; they are marked as such and appear with a discussion that points out what's inappropriate and how to correct it.
Kim Goodwin : Designing for the digital age, Wiley, 2009, Designing successful products and services in the digital age requires a multidisciplinary team with expertise in interaction design, visual design, industrial design, and other disciplines. It also takes the ability to come up with the big ideas that make a desirable product or service, as well as the skill and perseverance to execute on the thousand small ideas that get your design into the hands of users. It requires expertise in project management, user research, and consensus-building. This comprehensive, full-color volume addresses all of these and more with detailed how-to information, real-life examples, and exercises. Topics include assembling a design team, planning and conducting user research, analyzing your data and turning it into personas, using scenarios to drive requirements definition and design, collaborating in design meetings, evaluating and iterating your design, and documenting finished design in a way that works for engineers and stakeholders alike.
Simon, S., The impact of culture and gender on web sites: An empirical study, The Data Base for Advances in Information Systems, 32(1), (2001) The growth of electronic commerce, in particular business-to-consumer, has been explosive during the last few years. Until recently, the Web community has been a male dominated western-oriented society, with the design of Web sites reflecting that homogenous audience. Using an adapted version of Hofstede's dimensions as a means of differentiation, this study explores the perception and satisfaction levels of one hundred and sixty subjects on four web sites. Analysis indicates that perception and satisfaction differences exist between the cultural clusters and gender groups within those cultures --- Asia, Europe, Latin & South America, and North America. In particular, the perceptions of the Asian and Latin/South American were found to be similar, as were the perceptions of the Europeans and North Americans. Qualitative analysis indicates that females within certain cultures have widely different preferences from their male counterparts regarding web site attributes.
Stuart K. Card, Thomas P. Moran, Allen Newell (1983): The Psychology of Human–Computer Interaction. Erlbaum, Hillsdale 1983
Designing human-computer interfaces is still an art, learned best by creating many interfaces and carefully observing how real users interact with them. However, there are many tools from cognitive psychology that, if understood and applied, can yeild at least two benefits. First, by learning what is known about how humans operate, you can avoid many pitfalls in design. Second, you can make quantitative design decisions.
James Hom / The Usability Methods Toolbox (10 June 1998 )
http://jthom.best.vwh.net/usability/
This website includes compile information about almost all of the methods and techniques used in usability evaluation. I can find helpful information and a pointer to additional information that will help me find what I need.
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services / Everything you must know about usability (20 November 2009)
www.usability.gov
Usability.gov is a one-stop source for government web designers to learn how to make websites more usable, useful, and accessible. The site addresses a broad range of factors that go into web design and development. The site will help you to: Plan and design usable sites by collecting data on what users need, develop prototypes, conduct usability tests and write up results and measure trends and demographics.
Jakob Nielsen(1994), Usability Engineering, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers,
"The purpose of Jakob Nielsen’s Usability Engineering is to help nontechnical people improve the systems so that they are not only error-free but also easier and more pleasant to use, and more efficient. It is a book that ...shows us how to change the world and does so admirably....One of this book’s strengths is that it provides a wide selection of methods for improving systems, and allows for the unavoidable constraints of the real world."
--NEW SCIENTIST -- Review
Helen Sharp, Yvonne Rogers &Jenny Preece:Interaction Design: Beyond Human–Computer Interaction, 2nd ed. John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2007
‘This new edition of Interaction Design is a welcome and timely support for those of us teaching and researching in the field. It fills in the gaps that were emerging in the first edition as new interactive technologies become available and older ones change so much. I value this text for the way it is so grounded in real examples and actual human practices, and for its strong design focus. It is a most useful and usable book.’
—Dr Toni Robertson, Interaction Design and Work Practice Lab, University of Technology, Sydney
Alan Dix, Janet Finlay, Gregory Abowd, and Russell Beale (2003): Human–Computer Interaction. 3rd Edition. Prentice Hall, 2003. http://hcibook.com/e3/
The second edition of Human-Computer Interaction established itself as one of the classic textbooks in the area, with its broad coverage and rigorous approach, this new edition builds on the existing strengths of the book, but giving the text a more student-friendly slant and improving the coverage in certain areas. The revised structure, separating out the introductory and more advanced material will make it easier to use the book on a variety of courses. This new edition now includes chapters on Interaction Design, Universal Access and Rich Interaction, as well as covering the latest developments in ubiquitous computing and Web technologies, making it the ideal text to provide a grounding in HCI theory and practice.
Busch, T. Gender differences in self efficacy and attitudes towards computer, Journal of Educational Computing Research 12,(1995)
This study investigated gender differences for college computer science majors in Taiwan. Subjects were college students enrolled in five universities offering computer science programs. A total of 940 valid questionnaires were collected, including 796 males (85%) and 144 females (15%). Significant gender differences were not found for most of the College Entrance Examination (CEE) scores, prior computer experience and the prediction models of college performance. However, female student achieved significantly higher scores in CEE language component. Females were also found to outperform males in academic achievement at both the high school and college levels, including math courses. The results seem to suggest that, in Taiwan. female students who decided to enroll in the computer science programs might be more confident in their ability to compete with males in this male-dominated field, due to appropriate amount of math discipline and computer experience they gained prior to entering college
Ronald M. Baecker, Jonathan Grudin, William A. S. Buxton, Saul Greenberg (Eds.) (1995): Readings in human–computer interaction. Toward the Year 2000. 2. ed. Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco 1995
The effectiveness of the user-computer interface has become increasingly important as computer systems have become useful tools for persons not trained in computer science. In fact, the interface is often the most important factor in the success or failure of any computer system. Dealing with the numerous subtly interrelated issues and technical, behavioral, and aesthetic considerations consumes a large and increasing share of development time and a corresponding percentage of the total code for any given application. A revision of one of the most successful books on human-computer interaction, this compilation gives students, researchers, and practitioners an overview of the significant concepts and results in the field and a comprehensive guide to the research literature.
Brad A. Myers: A brief history of human–computer interaction technology. Interactions 5(2):44–54, 1998
This article is about the interaction between users and computers. For the direct communication between brain cells and computers.
Nielsen, Jakob (2000-03-19). "Why You Only Need to Test With 5 Users". Alertbox: Current Issues in Web Usability. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000319.html. This website includes general information about Usability, Usability testing’s and usability testing methods .
van Someren, Barnard, and Sandberg; The Think Aloud Method; Academic Press, 1994. ISBN0127142703 (com, uk) [van Someren et al., 1994] This book presents a detailed description of the Think Aloud Method, which was developed to facilitate knowledge acquisition and problem-solving by asking the participant to think aloud while solving a problem. The Think Aloud Method is based on the premise that people are often able to verbalize their thoughts as they solve a problem, and their resulting behavior can be analyzed to answer questions about problem solving behavior. This method is useful for psychological research on problem solving behavior, as well as for knowledge acquisition in the context of building expert computer programs. In many cases the Think Aloud Method is an invaluable source of information for psychologists and knowledge engineers.
Joseph Dumas and Janice Redish; A Practical Guide to Usability Testing, Revised Edition; Intellect,1999. ISBN 1841500208 (com, uk) [Dumas and Redish, 1999] Ever since publication, A Practical Guide to Usability Testing has maintained its position as the premier text in the field. This revised edition preserves the straightforward approach of the original, and an extended preface brings it up to date with all recent developments.
Written in plain English and filled with examples, the book begins by defining usability and explaining methods of usability engineering. Readers are taken through all the steps for planning and conducting a usability test, analysing data, and using the results to improve both products and processes. Included are forms that can be used or modified to conduct a usability test, and layouts of existing labs that will help readers to build their own.
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· Usability
· Tests
· Web
· Evaluations
· Application
· Human Factors
· Gender Factors
· Multimedia
· Online shop
· Database errors
· Navigation
· User
· Interface
· Redesign
· Interaction design pattern
· Analyses
· Airlines web
· Design
· Usability Testing Methods
· Heuristic Evaluation
· Severity Rating
· Redo It Right
· User Centered Design
· User Interface Design
· Information Visualization
· Learnability
· Interactivity
· Information architecture
· Gender Human Computer Interaction
· User Experience Design
