SoberIT Evaluation of UISB – The User Interface Specification Browser

SoberIT

www.soberit.hut.fi

Software Business and Engineering Institute

Evaluation of UISB – The User Interface Specification Browser Marko Nieminen, Mikael Johnson, Jarmo Parkkinen, Toni Koskinen Helsinki University of Technology Information Ergonomics Research Group / User Interfaces and Usability

www.soberit.hut.fi/ierg

HELSINKI UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

www.soberit.hut.fi/usability

SoberIT

Software Business and Engineering Institute

www.soberit.hut.fi

UISB – Support for Distributed/MultiDisciplinary UI Specification and Design

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User interfaces (UI) are effective tools for communicating the functionality and structure of a product or an application (software, service) to the intended customers and especially end users

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The development of user interfaces (UI) requires multidisciplinary expertise

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A multi-disciplinary design/development group needs tools to communicate the UI specifications and intermediate UI designs to each other

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UISB – The User Interface Specification Browser is an attempt to support this distributed/ decentralised UI design activity HELSINKI UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

SoberIT

Software Business and Engineering Institute

www.soberit.hut.fi

Our Previous Work

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Requirements for UISB: The results of our previous study (presented in HCII2001) pointed out several problems related to user interface definition and specification work:

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1) problems related to the user interface (UI) documents themselves and 2) problems related to the organisational processes of controlling the UI specifications

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The UISB application: The resulting UISB application has been presented in HCII2003

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Results from the previous papers are not presented in this presentation HELSINKI UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

SoberIT

Software Business and Engineering Institute

The UISB Tool

User Interface Specification Browser

HELSINKI UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

www.soberit.hut.fi

SoberIT

Software Business and Engineering Institute

www.soberit.hut.fi

Aim of the Study

 To evaluate: How does UISB support the

development and early evaluation of interactive UI’s?

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How does UISB support the creation of dynamically working UI’s from the development standpoint (visual designer, interaction/ software designer)? How do the interactive UI’s created with UISB serve usability testing/evaluation in the early stages of development project?

HELSINKI UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

SoberIT

Software Business and Engineering Institute

www.soberit.hut.fi

Research Settings

 Evaluation was carried out in co-operation with a real development organisation (developing a mobile handheld device)

 Evaluation 1: Developer workshop  Evaluation 2: A UISB model applied in an earlyphase usability test

HELSINKI UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

SoberIT

Software Business and Engineering Institute

www.soberit.hut.fi

Evaluation 1: Developer Workshop Arrangements  Developer users  Workshop (N=7) with several stakeholders (roles: visual designer, code writer, manual writer, project manager)  Usability walkthrough & business process simulation combined (testing the application and walking through the development activities with all development representatives)  Design task: ”The UI features that allow users to read, reply to, and delete a short message with a mobile device”

HELSINKI UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

SoberIT

Software Business and Engineering Institute

www.soberit.hut.fi

Evaluation 1: Results Stages in the Development Process

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1) Visual designer (visual layout; files) -> 2) Technical designer (menu structure; file import) -> 3) Writer of the user’s manual (desktop publishing)

Good in UISB

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menu structure creation was considered easy

Challenges

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LOTS of detailed UI improvement suggestions, e.g. ability to continue from previous design state/situation, “autosave” functionality, behaviour of the properties window adjustments/personalisation: UISB desktop layout and visible user interface components should be possible to define according to the individual needs (the support for “session/workspace memory”), also different views according to the development role of the person external applications: ability to cope with existing tools & file formats (linking vs. importing) modelling semi-interaction: not just static screenshots – and not complete interactive applications

HELSINKI UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

SoberIT

Software Business and Engineering Institute

www.soberit.hut.fi

Evaluation 2: Usability Test Experiment

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End-users testing a UI model running in UISB

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a laptop with touch-screen (”direct UI interaction”)

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test task: change a phone number in the phone book (with two different paths in the menu structure)

a usability test (N=16) with a UI model in the specification phase comparison of two competing interaction structures: gathering support for development decision making

HELSINKI UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

SoberIT

Software Business and Engineering Institute

www.soberit.hut.fi

Evaluation 2: Results

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all users were able to use the semi-interactive UI specification model

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UISB enabled realistic interaction with the on-screen mock-up

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users were keen on commenting the mock-up interaction and visual design (the model was not considered as a finalised product)

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the development of the two ”competing” interactive and testable designs was easy to do

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it was possible to arrange the usability test with an interactive prototype earlier than usually in the development process HELSINKI UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

SoberIT

Software Business and Engineering Institute

www.soberit.hut.fi

Conclusions   

Basic functionality of UISB did work; Many improvements are, however, required in the UISB UI level and in the development activities Experimenting with different design solutions not feasible enough with current UISB functionality An UISB like tool requires consideration/changes in the UI development process (modelling of interaction, co-operation, division of design work):

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The idea/concept of semi-interactive modeling in UI design specification work is not easily comprehensible and applicable UI design process (work) & tool match – how to do simultaneous design about UI design processes and activities alongside tool development work

The utility of such a tool needs to be evaluated from the standpoint of the whole process (e.g. design work – usability test) The complete utility of UISB did not get completely clear in a short workshop meeting; this would require a ”longitudinal study”

HELSINKI UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY