JUS - UXPA International

Card Sort Analysis Best Practices

Abstract As user experience professionals, we often face objections that there is not enough time or resources to conduct usability testing during development. With the proliferation of Agile methods being used by development teams to compress the software lifecycle, the focus on time becomes even more critical. To meet the challenges of Agile development, we combined aspects of two discount usability methods: the Rapid Iterative Test and Evaluation method (RITE) and the approach to usability testing taken by Steve Krug. In this paper, we describe why we combined the methods and which elements we incorporated from each. The impact of using this new RITE+Krug combination has been remarkable. Test sessions are getting between 12 and 15 observers on a regular …

Welcome Bill Albert

Dr. Bill Albert has joined the staff of the journal. While he has been on its editorial board since 2009, Bill and I will now manage the publication of JUS issues and the direction of the journal as joint Editors in Chief. Bill is Executive Director of the Design and Usability Center and Adjunct Professor in the Human Factors in Information Design program at Bentley University. Prior to joining Bentley, he was Director of User Experience at Fidelity Investments, Senior User Interface Researcher at Lycos, and Post-Doctoral Research Scientist at Nissan Cambridge Basic Research. Bill was awarded fellowships through the University of California Santa Barbara and the Japanese Government for his research in human factors and spatial cognition. He received …

Introduction

With this issue we begin a series of editorials and peer-reviewed articles on how user experience methods fit into an Agile development process. We are pleased to have an editorial by Diana DeMarco Brown, author of the 2012 book, Agile User Experience Design: A Practitioner’s Guide to Making It Work. She describes five myths about integrating user experience into product development in Agile environments. Among other recommendations, she urges practitioners to take advantage of the interactive communication that Agile provides to build trust within the development team and to fit in more customer feedback than with traditional methods. We also have a peer-reviewed article on a hybrid approach to usability testing in Agile design and development environments. Jen McGinn and …

Towards the Design of Effective Formative Test Reports

Abstract Many usability practitioners conduct most of their usability evaluations to improve a product during its design and development. We call these “formative” evaluations to distinguish them from “summative” (validation) usability tests at the end of development. A standard for reporting summative usability test results has been adopted by international standards organizations. But that standard is not intended for the broader range of techniques and business contexts in formative work. This paper reports on a new industry project to identify best practices in reports of formative usability evaluations. The initial work focused on gathering examples of reports used in a variety of business contexts. We define elements in these reports and present some early guidelines on making design decisions for …

Do Usability Expert Evaluation and Testing Provide Novel and Useful Data for Game Development?

Abstract A case study was done to study whether usability expert evaluation and testing are suitable for game development. In the study, a computer game under development was first evaluated and then tested. Game developers were then asked to rate the findings and give other feedback about the methods used and the results gained. It was found that the usability expert evaluation and testing provided both novel and useful data for game development. Based on these and the other results it is argued that the usability expert evaluation and testing have considerable face validity in game development. In addition to the usefulness and face validity of the methods it was studied whether the usability experts participating in the game usability …