Useful and usable

“Recognising and understanding the nature of the relationship between usability and other user experience goals is central to Interaction Design” Preece, Rogers, & Sharp, 2007.

The theory you covered in people - what makes them tick has been expressed as goals, principles, heuristics, rules. Some of these you will already be familiar with – others will be new.

Review this more practical body of knowledge in the following tasks.

NOTE: This is another task where divide and conquer is probably the best approach.

Usability and
user experience

Design
priniples

Useful mobile
products

Your
ePortfolio

Usability and user experience (approx 15 minutes)

Are you able to identify the difference between usability goals and user experience goals? While they are related, they often describe different dimensions of a technology product or service.

Usability goals: Preece, Rogers and Sharp (2002, 2007) outline 6 usability goals that constitute an ISO standard.
- Create a mind map of the 6 goals
- In particular note the discussion about how these goals can be turned into useful questions when analysing the usability of a product.
- Create some of your own questions which could possibly be useful for the ePortfolio you are going to develop
User experience goals are quite different to usability goals
- Read the description of these goals in Preece, Rogers and Sharp (2002, 2007)
- What is the fundamental difference between these two sets of goals?
- How are they related?
- Create a list of user experience goals that you think would be relevant for the ePortfolio you are creating

Design principles (approx 30 minutes)

Studies in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) developed a wide range of design principles and guidelines for interactive products. These have been developed to help designers explain and improve their design

Review two lists:
- Norman provides a set of 6 principlesthat are associated with designing tasks in an interactive product: visibility, feedback constraints, mapping consistency and affordances
- Shneiderman developed a set of “8 Golden Rules for Interface Design” (in links)
Create a comparison table (in links) where you outline Norman’s 6 principles and then align as many of the Shneiderman list with what Norman is describing
In your list, highlight those that you think will be most important to consider when designing your ePortfolio

Useful mobile products (approx 20 minutes)

Knowledge regarding the design of mobile technology products. These products represent a change in the computer paradigm from the desktop: to almost anywhere. Tangible bits, ubiquitous computing are a few of the names associated with this paradigm shift from the desktop.

Jones and Marsden (2006) outline 4 design considerations when designing mobile products: useful, usable user experience and technology acceptance.
- Review the powerpoint that examines these design considerations
- Complete the mindmap outlining the key points
- Compare these principles/ guidelines with those you have already reviewed.
- Where are the similarities, where are the differences?
- Do any of these guidelines apply to the ePortfolio task you have?
- List those that you think are appropriate.

Your ePortfolio (approx 20 minutes)

Goals, guidelines, principles, rules and even heuristics are terms associated with the range of information presented here. But what do they mean? How do they fit together?

Review Usable Usability: Which Terms do I use? in your text
- Understand the hierarchy of the information you have just reviewed
Create a set of usability goals, principles etc using the information collected in the precedinig activities
- remember ‘easy to use” is too generic for a goal – you need to specify what that means in the context of your product
- if necessary – make a series of statements which you then express as questions
- note if there any combinations of usability and user experience goals that will be incompatible in terms of this product
Post your early usability/user experience goals on your blog for your client to input.