Usability Engineering

Usability Engineering

by Mary Beth Rosson, John M. Carroll
Released October 2001
Publisher(s): Morgan Kaufmann
ISBN: 9780080520308

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Book description

You don't need to be convinced. You know that usability is key to the success of any interactive system-from commercial software to B2B Web sites to handheld devices. But you need skills to make usability part of your product development equation. How will you assess your users' needs and preferences? How will you design effective solutions that are grounded in users' current practices? How will you evaluate and refine these designs to ensure a quality product? Usability Engineering: Scenario-Based Development of Human-Computer Interaction is a radical departure from traditional books that emphasize theory and address experts. This book focuses on the realities of product development, showing how user interaction scenarios can make usability practices an integral part of interactive system development. As you'll learn, usability engineering is not the application of inflexible rules; it's a process of analysis, prototyping, and problem solving in which you evaluate tradeoffs, make reasoned decisions, and maximize the overall value of your product.

  • Written by prominent HCI educators who understand how to teach usability practices to students and professional developers.
  • Interleaves HCI theory and concepts with a running case study demonstrating their application.
  • Gradually elaborates the case study to introduce increasingly sophisticated usability engineering techniques.
  • Analyzes usability issues in realistic scenarios that describe existing or envisioned systems from the perspective of one or more users.
  • Emphasizes the real world of usability engineering-a world in which tradeoffs must be weighed and difficult decisions made to achieve desired results.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Foreword
  5. Preface
  6. Table of Contents
  7. Chapter 1: Scenario-Based Usability Engineering
    1. 1.1 Design by Scenario: Marissa’s Gravity Project
    2. 1.2 Managing Software Development
    3. 1.3 Usability in Software Development
    4. 1.4 Scenario-Based Usability Engineering
    5. 1.5 Doing Scenario-Based Usability Engineering
    6. 1.6 Example-Based Learning of SBD
  8. Chapter 2: Analyzing Requirements
    1. 2.1 Analyzing Work Practices
    2. 2.2 Getting Users Involved
    3. 2.3 Science Fair Case Study: Requirements Analysis
  9. Chapter 3: Activity Design
    1. 3.1 Designing Effective Activities
    2. 3.2 Designing Comprehensible Activities
    3. 3.3 Designing Satisfying Activities
    4. Science Fair Case Study: Activity Design
  10. Chapter 4: Information Design
    1. 4.1 Stages of Action in Human-Computer Interaction
    2. 4.2 Perceiving Information
    3. 4.3 Interpreting Information
    4. 4.4 Making Sense of Information
    5. 4.5 Science Fair Case Study: Information Design
    6. 4.6 Consistency and Coherence
  11. Chapter 5: Interaction Design
    1. 5.1 Selecting a System Goal
    2. 5.2 Planning an Action Sequence
    3. 5.3 Executing an Action Sequence
    4. 5.4 Science Fair Case Study: Interaction Design
  12. Chapter 6: Prototyping
    1. 6.1 Exploring User Requirements
    2. 6.2 Choosing Among Alternatives
    3. 6.3 Usability Testing
    4. 6.4 Evolutionary Development
    5. 6.5 Science Fair Case Study: Prototyping
  13. Chapter 7: Usability Evaluation
    1. 7.1 Usability Specifications for Evaluation
    2. 7.2 Analytic Methods
    3. 7.3 Empirical Methods
    4. 7.4 Science Fair Case Study: Usability Evaluation
  14. Chapter 8: User Documentation
    1. 8.1 The Production Paradox
    2. 8.2 Paper and Online Manuals
    3. 8.3 Demonstrations and Tutorials
    4. 8.4 Information in the Interface
    5. 8.5 Socially Mediated Documentation
    6. 8.6 Using Context and Intelligence
    7. 8.7 Science Fair Case Study: Documentation Design
  15. Chapter 9: Emerging Paradigms for User Interaction
    1. 9.1 Collaborative Systems
    2. 9.2 Ubiquitous Computing
    3. 9.3 Intelligent User Interfaces
    4. 9.4 Simulation and Virtual Reality
    5. 9.5 Science Fair Case Study: Emerging Interaction Paradigms
  16. Chapter 10: Usability Engineering in Practice
    1. 10.1 Usability in Organizations
    2. 10.2 Internationalization and Localization
    3. 10.3 Ethics of Usability
  17. Inferential Statistics
    1. A.1 Science Fair Case Study: How to Represent Visitors?
  18. Glosarry
  19. References
  20. Figure Credits
  21. Index
  22. About the Authors
  23. Instructions for online access

Product information

  • Title: Usability Engineering
  • Author(s): Mary Beth Rosson, John M. Carroll
  • Release date: October 2001
  • Publisher(s): Morgan Kaufmann
  • ISBN: 9780080520308