the suitability of a Web site design from the user's perspective. The term has been popularized by Web design guru Jakob Nielsen who has stressed that a Web site must be simple to use. One of the main points of usability relates to download times. For Nielsen, "fast response times are the most important criterion for Web pages." Nielsen also believes usability involves a human approach. He states that "what constitutes a good site relates to the core basis of human nature and not to technology."
Wiktionary Definition for: Usability
# computing the degree to which a software application or a website is easy to use with no specific training
With industry participation, NIST developed a Common Industry Format CIF for Usability Test Reports to provide a means for usability engineers to report results of their usability testing. In November 2000, NIST sponsored the 4th Industry Usability Reporting IUSR Workshop to further the progress in reporting usability. The NIST IUSR...
The biggest problem facing the usability field is how to scale up massively so that we can impact all the user interface designs in the world. Assume that we win the battle to convince management that they will get twice as much out of a project if it is designed...
The majority of modern international companies are well aware of concept of usability : many have their own usability laboratories and are using them to enhance their products' usability, and there is good support for the ISO standardization process. Recognition of these issues has led to the development of a...
SANTA CLARA, Calif.--BUSINESS WIRE--Oct. 1, 1998--UCSC Extension's business and management department presents a new workshop, Document Usability for Technical Communicators, beginning Oct. 8. Document Usability for Technical Communicators is a workshop designed for technical communication students with no background in usability. This course describes the principles and components...
NIST is developing methodologies to measure the usability of Web sites. Empirical evidence from research and commercial sources indicates that Web sites suffer from a lack of usability. Measuring usability of Web sites is more complicated than measuring usability of desktop applications. One difficulty is defining typical users and typical...
This paper reports on a study assessing the consistency of usability testing across organisations. Nine independent organisations evaluated the usability of the same website, Microsoft Hotmail. The results document a wide difference in selection and application of methodology, resources applied, and problems reported. The organizations reported 310 different usability problems....
Usability deals with whether or not the site communicates its content and functionality to the user and how well a user can effectively access and use the site’s information and features to perform a task. Usability corresponds to the customer’s question “Can I use it?” Each dimension is critical to...
Usability deals with whether or not the site communicates its content and functionality to the user and how well a user can effectively access and use the site’s information and features to perform a task. Usability corresponds to the customer’s question “Can I use it?” Each dimension is critical to...
There are few development organizations that have integrated usability activities as an integral part of their product development projects. One reason for this is that the benefits of better usability are not visible for the management. In this paper the author analyses the characteristics of some published usability cost-benefit models....
Recent articles in several publications highlighted two software usability products developed at NIST--NIST WebMetrics and the Common Industry Format CIF for Usability Test Reporting. This signifies industry understanding of the importance of these measurement tools for assessing web and software usability. A product review of automated web usability tools...
This paper presents a case study of how usability was dealt with in a procurement process of a content management system. The results indicate that the procurers found it difficult to define usability requirements, probably because they lacked tools and experience to do so. Difficulties also arose because the tools...
Many intranets are under-used. Intranet managers lament the low use and discuss how to get staff to 'Use the intranet more', resulting in marketing and promotions activities to increase use. Marketing and promotion activities are wasted however, if staff return to the intranet and find that it doesn't help them...
ST. LOUIS, Mo. -- MasterCard International today announced that A.G. Edwards and BigDates.com are the winners of MasterCard's first Usability Excellence Awards, created to recognize excellence in web-site usability. The MasterCard Usability Services Team, one of the premier user-centered design groups in the United States, evaluated sites submitted by companies...
ST. LOUIS -- MasterCard International announced today that it is hosting its first annual Usability Excellence Awards, created to recognize the most usable sites on the Web. Beginning today, companies can nominate their sites for consideration and evaluation by one of the premier usability teams in the United States -...
The authors present Vizability, a usability engineering tool that is motivated by the variability of analysis processes and facilitates the analysis of existing problem data with the goal of process improvement. Usability engineers spend considerable resources performing usability testing and analyzing the resulting data, but their work is often limited...
This paper brings together two different threads of work: investigating the relationship between usability and software architecture that has generated a number of usability scenarios with implications for software architecture and developing an architecture design assistant, Architecture Expert ArchE. One key element of ArchE is that quality attribute knowledge can...
The widespread distribution of HIS requires professional evaluation techniques. This study presents a usability questionnaire called IsoMetrics which is based on the international standard ISO 9241 Part 10. The questionnaire was applied to assess the usability of a Hospital Information System. The equivalence of the online and a paper-and-pencil format...
B. Mirel. 2000. ACM journal of computer documentation 24, no. 4:185-203. By recounting her often dramatic personal adventures for 2 years as usability manager at a small start-up software firm, Mirel shows how social and political forces ("leadership conflicts, factional disputes, renegade efforts,...
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