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Glossary » Usability Methods

80/20 rule

A principle for setting priorities: users will use 20% of the features of your product 80% of the time. Focus the majority of your design and development effort (80%) on the most important 20% of the product.

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affinity diagram

a simple technique for organizing concepts: designers write down ideas on a set of cards and then organize the cards by grouping them and by placing closely related concepts close to each other (e.g. by shuffling the cards on a…

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alpha testing

a stage of software development where the software is first tested for bugs by real users. In contrast to beta testing, alpha software is usually assumed to have some significant bugs or unimplemented portions.

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analytic memo

a brief note used during the coding and construction of data that summarizes a possible interpretation or analysis of the data. Memos help to remember particular analyses and focus future data collection and coding to explore ideas in the memos.…

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analytic modeling

the application of user models and interface models to make quantitative predictions of user performance with an interface.

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anecdotal report

an example stated in detail to demonstrate a point, often in narrative format. A case study is also a detailed consideration of one example, but in contrast to a case study, an anecdote is often one example selected from many…

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ANSI/INCITS-354 Common Industry Format

a standard format for usability reports, created by NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology).

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artifact analysis

the study of how people use and conceptualize objects, including how people use computers in their work or play. Artifacts may be examined from any number of perspectives, including where the objects are, how many there are, their functional role,…

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artificial intelligence

“AI”; a field of study which examines how to perform high-level thinking on computers. Artificial intelligence research is typically associated with domains such as speech synthesis and recognition, language translation, image recognition, and strategy and planning. AI research is also…

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automatic evaluation

a method of measuring the usability of a system automatically; that is, the usability is tested by a software application rather than manually, by a person.

Some types of automatic evaluation do not involve users at all. For instance, some…

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baseline

baseline is basically where things “are” in the sense that what we see is what is being done by a “majority” within a competitive space. Now you could argue that, because most are doing something, more audiences experience the same…

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benchmark testing

(summative evaluation) a test designed primarily to measure the level of performance, or benchmark, in terms of usability, either so that it may be compared with another design or checked to see if it meets some goal (criterion testing).

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best practices

the things that we do in recognition and presentation of natural workflows, hierarchies and priorities, cues, integration (physical vs. mental), etc. Labels, on the other hand, come and go — best practices endure, for the most part, longer than labels…

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beta testing

testing a nearly-finished version of a piece of software, with the goal of finding bugs missed by the developers. Often beta testing is carried out by people outside of the developers organization.

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between-subjects design

a study designed to make a comparison of 2 or more designs and that compares them by having one set of users try one design and another set of users try another design, measuring their performance for each design. This…

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BPR

business process reengineering, the analysis of how work is done within a business and how it can be restructured for greater efficiency and profitability, especially by examining the workflow within the organization.

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brainstorming

a creativity and problem-solving technique that involves the spontaneous generation of as wide a spectrum of ideas as possible.

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breakdown analysis

a technique for analyzing user interaction sequences which looks at times when users are focused on figuring out how to use the system (a “breakdown”) versus times when users are performing their intended tasks.

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Brooks’ Law

“Adding manpower to a late project makes it later.”

– from The Mythical Man-Month

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business rules

statements specifying constraints and relationships between components of a user interface. For example:

The Age field may not be less than zero (a constraint on a numeric field widget). When the Credit Card Expiration Date is less than Today’s Date,

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card sorting

a technique for uncovering the hierarchical structure in a set of concepts by having users group items written on a set of cards, often used, for instance, to work out the organization of a website.

For a website, users would…

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case study

an intensive analysis of a specific example. Case studies are useful for providing an in-depth understanding of complex situations and for suggesting models and mechanisms to integrate with theories. Case studies can also be quite powerful in providing demonstrations that…

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CAUSE

computer-aided usability engineering; tools to automate usability, such as screen layout tools, design checkers, event logging, automated usability testing, diagramming tools, task analysis tools, & tools for software localization.

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chauffeured prototype

a prototype, typically done as a paper-and-pencil version of the interface, that the designer walks through with the user and manually demonstrates how the interface would respond to user actions. For example, the user might say “I’d click this button”,…

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claims analysis

analyzing the relationship of design parameters to the usability of an interface. A claim is a statement that a certain aspect of a design, such as the location of a button, the interactive style of a scrollbar, or the feedback…

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