Course : ISYS6596 - User Experience Research

and Design
Year : 2020

Usability, Experience Design and Efficiency

Session 05 - 06
 Learning Outcomes

• LO 1: Explain the essentials of designing user experience

 References

• Benyon, David. (2019). Designing User Experience: A guide to

HCI, UX and interaction design (4th Edition). 04. Pearson.
United Kingdom. ISBN-13: 978-1292155517. Chapter 5, 6
• William Albert, , Thomas Tullis. (2013). Measuring the User
Experience: Collecting, Analyzing, and Presenting Usability
Metrics (Interactive Technologies). Morgan Kaufmann. United
States of America. ISBN: 978-0124157811. Page 86 – 92
• Jeff Sauro, James R Lewis. (2016). Quantifying the User
Experience: Practical Statistics for User Research. Morgan
Kaufmann. United States. ISBN: 978-0128023082. Page 237 -
238
 Sub Topics

• Accessibility
• Usability
• Acceptability
• Acceptability : TAM (Technology Acceptance Model)
• Design principles
• Engagement
• Designing for pleasure
• Aesthetics
• Collecting and Measuring Efficiency
• Analyzing and Presenting Efficiency Data
 Introduction

• Good design cannot be summed up in a simple way and nor

can the activities of the interactive systems designer,
particularly one who takes a human-centred approach to
design.
• Accessibility concerns removing the barriers that would
otherwise exclude some people from using the system at all.
• Usability refers to the quality of the interaction in terms of
parameters such as time taken to perform tasks, number of
errors made and the time to become a competent user.
• Clearly a system must be accessible before it is usable. A
system may be assessed as highly usable according to some
usability evaluation criteria, but may still fail to be adopted or
to satisfy people.
• Acceptability refers to fitness for purpose in the context of
use. It also covers personal preferences that contribute to
users ‘taking to’ an artefact, or not.
 Accessibility

• Access to physical spaces for people with disabilities has long

been an important legal and ethical requirement and this is
now becoming increasingly so for information spaces.
• People will be excluded from accessing interactive systems for
any of a number of reasons:
– Physically people can be excluded because of
inappropriate siting of equipment or through input and
output devices making excessive demands on their
abilities. For example, an ATM may be positioned too high
for a person in a wheelchair to reach, a mouse may be too
big for a child’s hand or a mobile phone may be too fiddly
for someone with arthritis to use.
– Conceptually people may be excluded because they cannot
understand complicated instructions or obscure
commands or they cannot form a clear mental model of
the system.
 Accessibility

• People will be excluded from accessing interactive systems for

any of a number of reasons: [cont…]
– Economically people are excluded if they cannot afford
some essential technology.
– Cultural exclusion results from designers making
inappropriate assumptions about how people work and
organize their lives. For example, using a metaphor based
on American football would exclude those who do not
understand the game.
– Social exclusion can occur if equipment is unavailable at an
appropriate time and place or if people are not members
of a particular social group and cannot understand
particular social mores or messages.
Accessibility
 Accessibility

• Inclusive design is based on four premises:

– Varying ability is not a special condition of the few but a
common characteristic of being human and we change
physically and intellectually throughout our lives.
– If a design works well for people with disabilities, it works
better for everyone.
– At any point in our lives, personal self-esteem, identity and
well-being are deeply Aesthetics in interaction affected by
our ability to function in our physical surroundings with a
sense of comfort, independence and control.
– Usability and aesthetics are mutually compatible.
Accessibility
 Accessibility

Figure 4.2 Options for accessibility keyboard settings

 Accessibility

Figure 4.3 A choice of voices (OS X)

 Usability
• A system with a high degree of usability will have the
following characteristics:
• It will be efficient in that people will be able to do things
using an appropriate amount of effort.
• It will be effective in that it contains the appropriate
functions and information content, organized in an
appropriate manner.
• It will be easy to learn how to do things and remember
how to do them after a while.
• It will be safe to operate in the variety of contexts in
which it will be used.
• It will have high utility in that it does the things that
people want to get done.
 Usability
• Early focus on users and tasks.
• Designers must first understand who the users will be, in part by studying
the nature of the expected work to be accomplished, and in part by
making users part of the design team through participative design or as
consultants.
• Empirical measurement.
• Early in the development process, intended users’ reactions to printed
scenarios and user manuals should be observed and measured. Later on
they should actually use simulations and prototypes to carry out real work,
and their performance and reactions should be observed, recorded and
analysed.
• Iterative design.
• When problems are found in user testing, as they will be, they must be
fixed. This means design must be iterative: there must be a cycle of design,
test and measure, and redesign, repeated as often as necessary. Empirical
measurement and iterative design are necessary because designers, no
matter how good they are, cannot get it right the first few times (Gould et
al., 1987, p. 758).
Usability
 Usability

Figure 4.4 Usability aims to achieve a balance in the PACT elements

 Usability
• A key issue for usability is that very often the technology
gets in the way of people and the activities they want to do.
• If we compare using an interactive device such as a remote
control to using a hammer or driving a car, we can see the
issue more clearly.
• Very often when using an interactive system we are
conscious of the technology; we have to stop to press the
buttons; we are conscious of bridging the gulfs
 Usability

Figure 4.6 My TV remote control

Source: Steve Gorton and Karl Shone/DK Images
 Acceptability
• Acceptability is about fitting technologies into people’s lives.
For example, some railway trains have ‘quiet’ carriages
where it is unacceptable to use mobile phones, and cinemas
remind people to turn their phones off before the film
starts.
• Apple’s iMac computer was the first computer designed to
look good in a living room. A computer playing loud music
would generally be considered to be unacceptable in an
office environment.
• An essential difference between usability and acceptability
is that acceptability can only be understood in the context
of use. Usability can be evaluated in a laboratory (though
such evaluations will always be limited). Acceptability
cannot
Acceptability
 Acceptability : TAM (Technology
Acceptance Model)
• At roughly the same time that usability researchers were
producing the first standardized usability questionnaires,
market researchers were tackling similar issues. Of these, one
of the most influential has been the Technology Acceptance
Model, or TAM
• According to the TAM, the primary factors that affect a user’s
intention to use a technology are its perceived usefulness and
perceived easeof use.
• Actual use of technologies is affected by the intention to use,
which is itself affected by the perceived usefulness and
usability of the technology. In the TAM, perceived usefulness is
the extent to which a person believes a technology will
enhance job performance, and perceived ease of use is the
extent to which a person believes that using the technology
will be effortless.
• A number of studies support the validity of the TAM and its
Acceptability : TAM (Technology
Acceptance Model)
 Acceptability
• The key features of acceptability are:
• Political
• Convenience
• Cultural and social habits
• Usefulness
• Economic

Figure 4.7 The three legs of product development

Source: after Norman, Donald A., Fig. 2.5, The Invisible Computer: Why Good Products Can Fail, © 1998 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, by permission of The MIT Press
 Design Principles
• Design principles can guide the designer during the design
process and can be used to evaluate and critique prototype
design ideas.
• For ease of memorizing and use we have grouped them into
three main categories - learnability, effectiveness and
accommodation - but these groupings are not rigid. Systems
should be learnable, effective, and accommodating.
• Principles 1-4 are concerned with access, ease of learning
and remembering (learnability).
• Principles 5-7 are concerned with ease of use, and
principles 8 and 9 with safety (effectiveness).
• Principles 10-12 are concerned with accommodating
differences between people and respecting those
differences (accommodation).
 Design Principles
• Designing interactive systems from a human-centered perspective is
concerned with the following.
• Helping people access, learn and remember the system
• Visibility
• Consistency
• Familiarity
• Affordance
• Giving them the sense of being in control, knowing what to do and
how to do it
• Navigation
• Control
• Feedback
• Safely and securely
• Recovery
• Constraints
• In a way that suits them
• Flexibility
• Style
• Conviviality
Design Principles
 Engagement

• Engagement is about ensuring that the interaction flows. If

usability is concerned with optimizing or balancing the PACT
elements in some domain, engagement is when the PACT
elements are truly harmonized.
• Nathan Shedroff in his book Experience Design (Shedroff, 2001)
presents a‘manifesto’ for what he sees as a new discipline.
From his work we identify as the key elements:
– Identity
– Adaptivity
– Narrative
– Immersion
– Flow
 Gamification

• Computer games have to be designed to be engaging and many of

the principles of engagement can be seen in the design of games.
Increasingly these principles are being applied to various interactive
systems. Websites need to hold people’s attention and principles of
games (‘gamification’) can be used to interest and motivate people.
• An engaging animated computer game will allow for subtle
differentiations of conditions. An important feature here is also the
integration of media.
• Nicole Lazzaro (Lazzaro, 2012) draws the link between fun and
emotion in her contribution to understanding what makes interactive
activities engaging. She identifies five ways that emotions impact the
gaming experience:
– Enjoy. Emotions create strong shifts in internal sensations.
– Focus. Emotions help gamers to focus effort and attention.
– Decide. Emotions are central to decision making in games.
– Perform. Emotions increase appeal to enhance performance.
– Learn. Emotions are important for motivation and attention.
Gamification
 Designing for pleasure

• Product designers have long been concerned with building in

pleasure as a key marketing point. Pleasure is a focus for many
design situations that were once much more dominated by the more
functional aspects of usability.
• Patrick Jordan’s book Designing Pleasurable Products (2000) argues
effectively that designing for pleasure can be as important as
ensuring that an interactive device is usable
• Jordan’s approach draws heavily on the work of Lionel Tiger, who is
an anthropologist and has developed a framework for understanding
and organizing thinking about pleasure.

Figure Apple MacBook Air

 Designing for pleasure

• Physio-pleasure
This is concerned with the body and the senses. Physio-
pleasure arises from touching or handling devices or from
their smell – think about the smell of a new car, or the
pleasingly solid but responsive feel of a well-designed
keyboard
• Socio-pleasure
Socio-pleasure arises from relationships with others. Products
and devices that have a socio-pleasurable aspect either
facilitate social activity or improve relationships with others.
• Psycho-pleasure
• Ideo-pleasure
 Designing for pleasure

• Psycho-pleasure
Psycho-pleasure (short for psychological pleasure) refers to
cognitive or emotional pleasure in Tiger’s framework. This
dimension of pleasure is useful for pulling together sources of
pleasure such as the perceived ease of use and effectiveness
of a device and the satisfaction of acquiring new skills
• Ideo-pleasure
Ideo-pleasure (ideological pleasure) concerns people’s values
– things one holds dear or meaningful – and aspirations. We
are more likely to enjoy using items that fit our value system.
Aspects which come readily to mind here might include a
respect for careful craftsmanship and design, the desirability
or otherwise of having an obviously expensive device, and our
perceptions of the trading ethics of the supplier (for example,
commercial software as against free shareware).
 Aesthetics

• Aesthetics is a large area of study concerned with human

appreciation of beauty and how things are sensed, felt and
judged. Aesthetics takes us into the world of artistic criticism
and the philosophy of art itself.
• Hassenzahl (2007) discusses aesthetics in terms of pragmatic
attributes and hedonic attributes. Lavie and Tractinsky (2004)
see the aesthetics of interactive systems in terms of classical
aesthetics (clean, clear, pleasant, aesthetic, symmetrical) and
expressive aesthetics (original, sophisticated, fascinating,
special effects, creative).
 Efficiency

• Time on task is often used as a measure of efficiency, but

another way to measure efficiency is to look at the amount of
effort required to complete a task.
• This is typically done by measuring the number of actions or
steps that users took in performing each task.
• An action can take many forms, such as clicking a link on a
web page, pressing a button on a microwave oven or a mobile
phone, or flipping a switch on an aircraft.
• Each action a user performs represents a certain amount of
effort. The more actions taken by a user, the more effort
involved. In most products, the goal is to increase productivity
by minimizing the number of discrete actions required to
complete a task, thereby minimizing the amount of effort
 Collecting and Measuring
Efficiency
There are some important points to keep in mind when collecting
and measuring efficiency.
• Identify the action(s) to be measured: For websites, mouse
clicks or page views are common actions. For software, it
might be mouse clicks or keystrokes. For appliances or
consumer electronics, it could be button presses. Regardless
of the product being evaluated, you should have a clear idea
of all the possible actions.
• Define the start and end of an action: You need to know when
an action begins and ends. Sometimes the action is very quick,
such as a press of a button, but other actions can take much
longer. An action may be more passive in nature, such as
looking at a web page. Some actions have a very clear start
and end, whereas other actions are less defined.
 Collecting and Measuring
Efficiency
There are some important points to keep in mind when collecting
and measuring efficiency.
• Count the actions: You must be able to count the actions.
Actions must happen at a pace that can be identified visually
or, if they are too fast, by an automated system. Try to avoid
having to review hours of video to collect efficiency metrics.
• Actions must be meaningful: Each action should represent an
incremental increase in cognitive and/or physical effort. The
more actions, the more effort. For example, each click of a
mouse is almost always an incremental increase in effort.
 Analyzing and Presenting
Efficiency Data
• The most common way to analyze and present efficiency
metrics is by looking at the number of actions each participant
takes to complete a task.
• Simply calculate an average for each task (by participant) to
see how many actions are taken.
• This analysis is helpful in identifying which tasks required the
most amount of effort; it works well when each task requires
about the same number of actions.
• However, if some tasks are more complicated than others, it
may be misleading.
• It’s also important to represent the confidence intervals
(based on a continuous distribution) for this type of chart.
 Analyzing and Presenting
Efficiency Data
LOSTNESS
• Another measure of efficiency sometimes used in studying
behavior on the web is called “lostness” (Smith, 1996).
Lostness is calculated using three values:
• N: The number of different web pages visited while
performing the task
• S: The total number of pages visited while performing the
task, counting revisits to the same page
• R: The minimum (optimum) number of pages that must be
visited to accomplish the task
• Lostness, L, is then calculated using the following formula:
 Analyzing and Presenting
Efficiency Data
• Consider the example shown in Figure 4.7. In this case, the
user’s task is to find something on Product Page C1.
• Starting on the home page, the minimum number of page
visits (R) to accomplish this task is three. However, Figure 4.8
illustrates the path a particular user took in getting to that
target item.
• This user started down some incorrect paths before finally
getting to the right place, visiting a total of six different pages
(N), or a total of nine page visits (S). So for this example:
Analyzing and Presenting
Efficiency Data
Analyzing and Presenting
Efficiency Data
 Analyzing and Presenting
Efficiency Data
• Once you calculate a lostness value, you can easily calculate
the average lostness value for each task. The number or
percentage of participants who exceed the ideal number of
actions can also be indicative of the efficiency of the design.
• For example, you could show that 25% of the participants
exceeded the ideal or minimum number of steps, and you
could break it down even further by saying that 50% of the
participants completed a task with the minimum number of
actions.
 Exercises

• Look at Figure Above, an example of a GUI application.

Critique the design from the perspective of the general design
principles.
Thank