AssignmentANIL KUMAR PERUKA-0824609

University Degree Mathematical and Computer Sciences

TABLE OF CONTENTS

A report on recognized techniques that can be used for the design of usable interfaces.

1.1 Conclusion

2. A report on usability evaluation and testing techniques that can be used to evaluate web sites

2.1 Conclusion

3. Evaluation of websites

3.1 Plan for the evaluation

3.2 Results of the evaluation

3.3 Conclusion

4. Web site design

4.1. New Screen designs

4.2 Discussions

5. Critical Evaluation

Bibliography:

A report on recognized techniques that can be used for the design of usable interfaces

The current research is about usability websites. The present web site is mainly designed for the watches. This web site provides different types of watches and their information. This watches website is useful for the user who are searching for variety products, this website display various products like men’s watches, women’s watches, alarm clocks and etc. There are several existed websites to provide the watches information most of them are failing to present full set of information required for users. The existed website has many issues to over come those problems the new website is designed to provide the better feature.

User Centered Design:

To develop usability websites the user interface design is most important to access the required information. The general method for achieving usability website design is User Centered Design (UCD). User Centered Design is important for developing the good user interface for usability websites. UCD can reduce development costs, increase sales and reduce staff costs for employers. UCD is useful to design the user interface design of the project it focuses mainly on user requirements, usability goals, tasks and flow of the wok in the design of the interface Shawn (Lawton Henry and Justin Thorp, 2006). UCD includes the user requirements; design, testing, analysis, focus groups and it understand user needs and refine designs based on user feedback. The design of the website is depend on requirements of the users. UCD is also known as human centered design.UCD is an approach to develop effective and interactive system. It follows a step by step methods and techniques to develop well structured web interfaces. The UCD process is an iterative process in this design and evaluation steps are built in from the first stage of the project through implementation (Raissa Katz-Haas, 1998).

User Centered Design Techniques:

UCD have many techniques to develop good interface design such as focus groups, Usability testing, questionnaires, interviews and card sorting. There is a wide variety of guidance is available for how to use suitable methods are used to support UCD. ISO 13407 summarize four essential activities in a user-centered design those are (Webcredible, 2006):

Gathering requirements while understanding the context of the use that means understanding the use of website.
Specifying requirements of user and the project
Developing design and prototype
Evaluating user interface design

The following are popular general methods for User Centered Design (NASA, 2010).

Storyboarding
story board is the best technique to develop the project or web site structure and flow of the work. Storyboard is a sequence of images; it describes the relationship between the individual tasks or screen outputs and actions within a system. A critical storyboard contains a number of images which are represent features like as navigation menus, dialogue boxes and windows. The storyboard can also represent possible usable interfaces and flow of the project work (NASA, 2010).

Surveys:

Surveys involved managing a set of written questions to a large population of users. Surveys can help determine required information, work practice and attitudes. This method provides a quick and better way to conduct a user based evaluation of current prototype. The focus is on task completion and the gaining of design feedbacks where users are unable to complete tasks (NASA, 2010). The importance of this method is a few users can participate and get accurate details. In this method survey person’s observer user’s interaction with the system to accomplish tasks and identify the user interface problems while using the websites.

Focus groups:

In focus groups users easily participate to share their ideas and opinions. Focus groups get together number of users in a single location for single purpose. Focus groups are useful early in requirements specification but can also serve as a means of collecting feedback once a system has been in use for some time (J. Kitzinger, 1994). Focus groups help to provide a multi factor viewpoint on requirements and identify issues that may need to be tackled. Mainly focus groups are help in collecting the qualitative data, providing detailed insights into individuals thinking, experiences and their perceptions instead of statistically facts. Focus groups are allowing direct communication between designers and users. This method enables general and specific exploration of issues. Focus groups are suitable to retrieve the data which is not previously expressed.

Card sorting:

Card sorting is a method it allows designers to observe how users group the web site items. Each item is written in a small index card there are nearly 30 to 80 cards. Users use these cards and sort these cards into groups. Each group is labeled with particular name. The designers use this information while developing the web site structure (Webcredible, 2006). The dissimilarity of this method is reverse Card Sort, in this group of cards representing the web sites information, content and user functions. Items of information are written on individual index cards which are then sorted by users into categories according to predetermined criteria; users explain why they have categorized the items in a particular way.

Questionnaires:

This method is good for gathering statistical data, in this pre defined set of questions are asked the users to know their responses. In the usable interface design process this method is used only gain remote access to users of site. In this method large number of people involved. This is the best way to get the large amount of information from the different users of the website.

Interviews:

This is a preview of the whole essay

Questionnaires:

Interviews:

Interviewer are semi-structured method, in this questions are asked through telephone or by face-to-face. In this method interviewed may include a designer, normal user, content experts and users themselves. This method is used early stage of the design process to gather the information of requirements. In this method the users can participates with unique point of view if the interviewer find any difficulties immediately solve those (Webcredible, 2006).

Early development methods

To develop effective usable interface design rapid prototyping is god method it is a collection of formal and informal techniques. This method support rapid iterations in the interface design lifecycle. This method is categorized depending on whether the prototype is passive paper or machine. Usability assessment methods include inspection by human factors experts by designers or by an appropriate combination. The designer can select the appropriate method depending up on the available skills and potential benefits of the user (Nigel Bevan and Ian Curson, 1998).

Late development methods

The late development methods are used at the end of the designing process. The usability testing method is one of the late development method, it depend on the relative importance of obtaining design feedbacks. The performance measurement method is a structured method for delivering meaningful and objective metrics of the performance of the user system (Nigel Bevan and Ian Curson, 1998). The metrics can be used for acceptance criteria, and to compare the performance of alternative designs and products.

Usability testing:

Usability testing measures the quality of the interactive system. It is measures the extent to which the interactive system can be used in a specific context to achieve specific goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction (Emile H. L. Aarts and Stefano Marzano, 2003). It measuring the quality with standardized instrument without it would not be possible to set good design criteria to improve the usability of an interactive system in a systematic way. This method is used after completing the project to find the problems. Evaluators and designers observe users performances and behaviors using the actual system to determine usability problems. By using this method designer can easily find out quality and authentication problems with in short time period. This method is time consuming regarding the plan and analysis.

1.1 Conclusion:

Hence from the above it can be understood that to design the effective web site the user interfaces are must, because the user can interact with the usable interfaces only. The web site is attractive when the usable interfaces are effective and they can not provide a problem in the website. When the user interfaces design is good then only the users are interested to use the usability websites, so the web sites are designed with good interface design. User Centered Design offer techniques or methods to develop the effective usable interface design for the web sites. Many UCD techniques are available now to design the usable interfaces but in this scenario some of the methods are discussed. These techniques can be used in the project in different phases of the project lifecycle depends up on the design requirements. These techniques can support to developing the website while providing the different type of information. Several UCD techniques are described in the above like story boards, focus groups, questionnaires, early development methods and usability testing methods. For developing the watches web site story boards, focus groups and other techniques are used. Because the story board provides a complete overview of the usable interfaces which are required for the users and it shows the flow of the website activity. From this UCD method plays major role to develop the good interactive usable interface design for the websites.

A report on usability evaluation and testing techniques that can be used to evaluate web sites

Every web site need to test whether it is work properly or not. The web site efficiency and effectiveness is measured by using the usability evaluation. Usability evaluation is used to measures the user interface design and functionality and effectiveness of the web site. In general every web site could be evaluated for usability. The usability evaluation results the effective and good web site. The usability evaluation considers the usability goals which are specified in the requirements of the user and test the product after developing. Finally the usability evaluation results compare to the usability goals. There are mainly three methods for evaluating the usability of the web site. The three methods are used depending up on the type of source use for the evaluation. Those methods are Testing, Inspection, and Inquiry.

Testing methods:

Usability testing methods used to evaluate a web site by testing methods. By using these methods evaluators observe the user errors while they are using the web site. Generally these methods are measuring the efficiency and accuracy of the web site. In these methods users participate on the typical tasks while they are using the web site and the evaluators see how the user interface supports the users. The usability testing includes the following techniques:

Coaching method is one of the usability testing method; in this users are allowed to ask any questions of an expert coach who will answer to the best of his or her ability. In this method separate expert user are involved to provide coaching to develop the good interface design. The main intention of this method is to find the information which is required for the users in order to provide better training to develop the interface design (Jakob Nielsen, 2001). This method is used in the process of web site designing, code, test and deployment.

Performance measurement is one of the best methods to evaluate the usability of the web site. This method is used to obtain the data about the performance of the web site that means the efficiency of the user interfaces and their accuracy. In this method the evaluator’s performance is also gathered during the usability test. In this method the resulting data is come accurately because this technique is use in a formal usability laboratory. To get the accurate result in this method there are at least five user participants are needed. The technique can be used in the code, test, and deployment process of the web site development (J. Nielsen, 1993).

In order to find the usability evaluation of the web site the remote testing is one method. This method is used when the evaluators are separated space and time from the web site users. That means the valuators can not directly participate in the testing process, there are different types of remote testing. One of that is same time but different place, here the evaluator can see the users screen through computer network and may be able to hear what the test user says during the test through speaker telephone. Another one is different time different place testing, in this situation the user test session is guided and logged through a special piece of software.

Inspection methods:

The usability evaluation is also measured through inspection methods. In inspection methods the participants are usability specialist (software developers, users and other members). The fallowing are the generally used usability inspection methods.

Cognitive Walkthroughs

Cognitive walkthrough is one of the most important usability evaluation techniques. This technique I mainly focused on the learn ability of the user interface design and its efficiency and it is the best technique to evaluate the usability security. This method is used to find the level of usability for a website and most typical user tasks supported by the website (Alma Whitten and J. D. Tygar, 1999). In this method the evaluator always observe whether the right effect is come or not and observe the correct action is perform or not. These observations are then used to improve the usability of the web site.

To develop a good interface design web site is not a matter of present in future also it provides the same features as it now. To evaluate that features of the web site the feature inspection method is used. This inspection technique mainly focused on the features of the developed web site or project. In this method the inspectors are produce the use cases to represents the end result of the task. In web sites each feature is analyzed for its availability, understandability and other aspects of usability. For example, a common user scenario for the use of a word processor is to produce a letter. The features that would be used include entering text, formatting text and spell checking.

A heuristic evaluation technique is the most popular technique to easily assess the user interface design of the web sites. This technique is bets suitable to fix a number of usability problems. In this method number of evaluators separately evaluates the web site to come up with potential usability problems. According to Nielsen's experiences “in this method around 5 evaluators usually results in about 75% of the overall usability problems being discovered”. In this method evaluators can easily evaluate the interface design compare to other techniques. The main intention of 6thies method is to find the usability problems in the user interface design of the web site. This method involves a set of usability principles to examine the user interface design (Jean Scholtz, 2003). There are ten principles for user interface design they are error prevention, user controls, visibility of the system and efficiency and flexibility of the interface design. These principles also help the users to find and recover the errors.

Pluralistic walkthrough method is used at the project or web site design stage. This method is mainly used to evaluate get the new design of user interface. In this method the project developer first take paper prototype after that group of users and developer are meet together to step through a set of tasks, discussing and evaluating the usability of a web site. There are many advantages through this technique those are it provides a variety range of skills and view usability problems (Jakob Nielsen and Robert L. Mack, 2007). Through this method the usability issues are resolved quickly. Three types of participants are involved in this method they are users, product developers and engineers. This method is very useful for system designers to get valuable information about the users tasks with little effort. In addition the system designers also get comments on the design ideas.

The aim of perspective based inspection method is to achieve usability of the project or web site along with other approaches in designing of the user interfaces. This usability inspection method has been adopted by many developers because of this effectiveness of current usability inspection techniques (Zhijun Zhang, Victor R. Basili and Ben Shneiderman, 1999).

Inquiry methods:

In inquiry usability evaluators get the information about user’s likes, dislikes, requirements and understanding of the system by interacting with them, observing them using the system in real work. By using this method the assessment of the web site or project is evolved. There are number of inspection methods to evaluate the usability of the web sites.

In this usability inspection method the evaluators directly go to the user’s work place and observe their usage of the project or web site. Evaluators find the user problems while they are interacting with that system to complete their given tasks. In this method the evaluators directly produce the report of the usability of the user interface design problems (Jakob Nielsen, 2001). This method is used when the project is going to test and deployment stages.

In this evaluation technique the interviewer asks the questions to the user, the user replies verbally and the interviewer records those responses. This method of interviewing is in two forms may be in unstructured interviewing or structured interviewing. In the early process of usability evaluation the unstructured interviewing method is used to gather the users experience information about user interface design. In this method the interviewer does not have any pre defined plan (Jakob Nielsen, 2001). The main aim of this method is to gather the information on procedures accepted by users and on their expectations of the user interface of the web site. In structured interviewing method the interviewer has pre defined structure and in this method a close interaction is possible to evaluator with users.

2.1 Conclusion:

Usability evaluation is a measurement to know the usability of the interface design in web sites. Usability testing plays an important role in the process of finding usability evaluation of web site. There are different types of methods used for evaluating the user interface design. Some methods are take large span of time and some of them are give result quickly. So based on all these things I have used a method which is recommended by every one and will have good results at the end. As we know that testing involves some of the resources like the laboratory, finance and personnel. Not every testing requires the laboratory and only few require those and the cost vary from one testing to another. When coming to my design I use simple type of techniques while design my web site for this I take more feed backs from the more number of users to know their experiences and opinions. These techniques are very helpful to my research to develop web site with good interface designs.

Evaluation of websites

plan for the evaluation:

Before starting to my web site design I have observed so many web sites which are provided watches information. I have seen different elements that are included in those websites. According to those I prepared one story board layout to represents my watches web site. In that story board I have drawn all the elements which are needed for my web sit design. To put different options in my web sites I see the existing web sites through that I may get number of ideas. For this I am searching different built in web sites and find out the good elements. In the existing web site mainly I concentrated on user interface design. I used many usability testing techniques to test the existing web sites. I am checking all the filed in those web sites by clicking on the each option. For example am checking the login form in the web site in this I tested all the fields are working properly or not, for this I entered wrong values but in the existing sites the user name is taken numbers also. In that I find the problem in login page. I tested each filed which are included in the existed watches web sites. I checked search option to search the products with watches key word to display the all products based on the search key. I had tested each and every page of the existed web sites to find the errors because I want o over come those errors in my developing web site. I checked all the menu items, because when particular menu item is clicked the related page is displaying or not. For example when I am clicking on contact us page only the contact page is displayed or not.

Results of the evaluation:

After searching the websites I noted all the main functionalities and option links which are required for my watches web site. To develop the interface design for my web site I saw the existed web site and find the difficulties and noted those because the user interface design is important for every web site. In watches web site it is must to attract the users. In my existed web site evaluation I found many problems in terms of login page it takes any value instead of characters. And in most of the web sites the watches images are flickering that means the images are not clear view. So I need to solve that problem in my application. Inmost of the web sites are not color full dull colors are used and the web site interface design is poor. Because of this lack of user interface design the user many not interested to see the web site. I got an idea from this evaluation of the existed portals and I tried to over come those problems and provide good watches web portal for the users.

conclusion:

From this web site assessment I got an idea about my developing watches web site. I got an idea how to implement the effective user interface design to attract the users. In this evolution I found many problems like watches images flickering, less user interface design and login page errors in some web sites. With the help of this evaluation I develop web site while overcoming all these disabilities and provide a good interface design.

Web site design

New screen designs

To design my watches web site designing I prepared initial web layout with all requirements of the users because it is very important to create the final prototype. In that layout design I included all the navigate options which are needed to my usability web site. I have used user interface design techniques to design the attractive web site, because user interface is must for user to attract or feel good about the web site. I have prepared power point presentation (PPT) to show my watches web site design. In that user interface design is created with UCD techniques. In that I places all the navigate links and information about the watches (Products). I created the products page with attractive color combinations and images. The products page contains the whole content of the watches such as price details and quality. The screen designs of watches web portal re shown in the PPT.

4.2 Discussions:

At the initial stage of development I faced many problems in order to provide the good interface design. I get ideas from my tutors and from my co-students and make small changes regarding interface design like colors and characters and images. I have set proper images and information to the watches. I should fallow all the usability techniques and UCD methods while developing the web site to avoid usability the problems. After completing the design process usability testing methods are applied to find the errors. Later I noted those errors and developed error free design of my project.

Critical evaluation:

Now a day so many usability web sites are come cross. In this way I want to develop one web site in this I want show the watches information. Achieving good usable interface design is a very complex task. In this research I study about different UCD techniques to develop the good interface design for my usability web site. To develop this web portal firstly I developed a layout with all user requirements. After that I prepared a PPT with all functionalities and navigate links, colors and etc. while developing the web site I considered different UCD techniques and usability evolution techniques and usability testing methods. The UCD techniques are very helpful for my user interface design and the evaluation techniques are helped me to assess the usability of web sites and testing techniques are helpful to test the usability of my project. By using all these methods I developed attractive usability interface design web site for watches with different features.

Bibliography:

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