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Survey based usability evaluation of MS Word (Survey Analysis (In phase 01…
Survey based usability evaluation of MS Word
Research Survey
Usability evaluation will help developers to recognize different problems faced by users of specific software
developers tries to solve hat problem to make the software more effective, efficient and more satisfactory than existing one
The main advantage is the possibility to directly explore the user's interaction with the interface and to collect information about potential usability problems and user preferences at first
Usability evaluation techniques based on user survey have three variants depending user’s experience.
These are user-based evaluation, expert evaluation, and hybrid approaches
These techniques is the necessary participation of representative target users
Survey Analysis
In phase 01, the objectives for usability analysis of MS word (both version) were evaluated on basis of user feedback.
More users were in favor that MS Word 2007 provides better efficiency and effectiveness than MS word 2003 from learnability prospective.
Similarly the users agreed that they feel that MS Word provides better effectiveness and efficiency to achieve goals of short Time memory, consistency, jargon, flexibility and task conformance.
Individuals are likely to vary in interacting software systems and how they approach improving themselves
It was interesting to see that respondents thought MS Word 2003 provides better navigation than 2007 version both from efficiency and effectiveness point of view.
More users than 80% users think that clip art gallery of MS word is not useful.
53% users have liked and think that RibbonX is more useful than previously provided interface of Microsoft word
Related Work
Important work has been done on the development and use of usability evaluation methods that aim at evaluating office related products.
Surveys can be used to get user based evaluation of usability of software
The questionnaire was applied to assess the usability of a Hospital Information System
Authors have demonstrated how to use the IsoMetrics questionnaire to identify critical usability aspects with respect to different user types
The overall findings for the Word tasks were not greatly positive, and exhibited a pronounced difference between the general and advanced users
Surveys have been used to evaluate ratings of opinion for different features of Microsoft office package and related products
Results are based upon structured tests involving 15 participants.
Phases
Survey Phase 01
It get a comparison of product’s latest version with it its predecessor as well as assessment of our respondents from knowledge of product and earnestness to survey point of view.
Qualities levels of expertise in using software, and educational level are fundamental
People formulated 3 different categories of respondents
Category of undergraduate students of computer science department
Category constituted with undergraduate students of other departments
Junior faculty and graduate students,
It was identified nine objectives for assessing this product.
These objectives include learn-ability, short term memory, consistency, customizability, jargon, color schemes, navigation, flexibility, and task conformance.
These objectives were chosen on basis of different literature and expert opinion
Survey Phase 02
The focus of this phase was to evaluate the usability of 2007 features.
in second phase we distributed shorter version of questionnaire consisting of 10 close ended questions
keeping in mind this expert opinion we can expect that our survey has produced enough feedback regarding this product.
It is used a two-stage approach to analyze and validate the data. Both the stages were having specific purpose
Limitations of the Study
Non-expert evaluators are defined as evaluators who don't have formal training in usability but might be experts on other fields.
Results show that the non-experts were capable of reporting usability problems on the interface to some extent
Data provides interesting insights into the problems faced by these respondents
But it is not appropriate to generalize from this sample as sample size is small
Bibliografía: Rauf, A., Rehman, S. U., Batool, S., & Ali, S. A. (2010, December). Survey based usability evaluation of MS Word. In 2010 International Conference on User Science and Engineering (i-USEr) (pp. 193-198). IEEE.
Reflection: With this lecture. I've just learn the importance of usability evaluations, 'casuse I've never tought that it was a really important and complex process, that requires strict steps and a lot of effort to get the precise data after the survey. So I could conclude one more time, that usability is very important in every step/process of software development.