Abstract

This presentation includes the key tenets and the benefits of usability engineering. The categories of benefits are discussed, with examples from both industry and government. How to calculate cost-benefit and return-on-investment examples are given, and the audience performs exercises following the examples. The session also covers the types of methods and activities that constitute usability engineering, and tactics for optimizing the results. Several short videos will be shown.

Biographies

Kara Pernice Coyne

Kara Pernice Coyne is a Principal Usability Specialist at Lotus/IBM, where she manages the usability program for Lotus Notes and Domino. She has worked in the usability field for seven years, and during that time she has not only been an independent user interface design consultant, but she also founded and managed three successful usability programs for the Lotus Graphics Products Group, Interleaf, and the Lotus/IBM Notes & Domino products. Her work on Lotus Freelance Graphics helped to gain back its market leadership, and become a usability award-winning product. At Interleaf, she created a site visit program, and based on the data collected, contributed to new product concepts and features. Additionally, she taught developers and members of the consulting organization how to evaluate and redesign their products for usability. More recently, Kara has introduced a variety of usability evaluation methods to the Lotus Domino team. She designed and oversaw the construction of a state-of-the-art testing facility. She is currently perfecting her skills in collecting usability data at product conferences and trade shows.

Kara has been a presenter at the Usability Professionals Association and the Software Developer's East Conferences. She is a member of UPA and SIGCHI. She was a session chair for design briefings in their introduction year at CHI, and has reviewed design briefings and papers for multiple CHI conferences. She has published articles in IEEE, and Interactions magazines. Kara has a BA from Simmons College, and an MBA form Northeastern University.

Janice Anne Rohn

Janice Rohn is Manager of Usability Labs and Services at Sun Microsystems. Janice joined Sun in 1992, when she founded the usability engineering group and designed and built usability labs for Sun's sites in California and Colorado. Janice has been working on human-computer interaction (HCI) and strategy issues across Sun, and has led a number of efforts to improve the integration, usage, and efficiency of HCI methods. As a Quality Officer, she has worked on driving usability into the practices and processes across the company. Prior to joining Sun, Janice was a usability engineer and designer for Apple. Prior to Apple, Janice was a research assistant at Stanford University in expert systems and medical informatics, where she blended her background and interests in psychology, computer science, design, and video to perform what is now known as usability engineering.

Janice has done a wide variety of presentations, including presentations and panels for CHI, UPA, ErgoCon, and Interact, and guest lectures and courses for Stanford University, University of San Francisco, College of Notre Dame, Sun Microsystems, and Apple University. Janice has also produced a number of videotapes on HCI and written a number of publications, including articles and columns in journals, and book chapters and contributions. Janice was featured in a BBC program on HCI. Janice has been President of the Usability Professionals' Association for the past two years, and is a founding board member of the organization. Janice is currently spearheading an effort to raise the awareness of usability and HCI in the press, public, and the government through the UPA Outreach program that she founded.

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Abstract

This tutorial will discuss usability measurements -- how to choose and apply them. Topics covered include: why measurement is important, common usability metrics, how to set usability goals, how to tailor the measurements after setting goals, selecting the measurements to confirm that usability goals have been met, and different data collection methods. Attendees will perform exercises designed to demonstrate the selection of metrics for two different scenarios. The measurement process will be summarized including a discussion of preparing and reporting results. Additional information about usability testing will be distributed to attendees.

Biographies

Laura Downey

Laura Downey is a human factors engineer with the Vignette Corporation in Austin, TX. Vignette is the leader in web content management systems. Previously, Laura worked as an applied researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) where she most recently focused on investigating rapid, remote, and automatic methods for evaluating web site usability. As part of this research, Laura architected two of the three web usability tools in the current NIST WebMetrics tool suite. Laura is the founder of the NIST usability engineering symposiums and a co-chair of the 1998 Government Day. She has over 7 years experience in designing and evaluating user interfaces and holds an MS in Computer Science.

Jean Scholtz

Jean Scholtz is currently a researcher in the Visualization and Virtual Reality Group at NIST. Her interests are in tools for evaluating software from the user perspective, primarily CSCW systems and web applications. Dr. Scholtz started a masters' track in HCI at Portland State University where she was a member of the computer science faculty for 5 years. Dr. Scholtz worked for several years at Intel Corporation where she was responsible for the usability lab in Hillsboro, OR. As a co-manager of the human factors group for desktop video conferencing, Dr. Scholtz was responsible for the design and evaluation of all desktop video products. Her group was instrumental in starting ethnography work for identifying new product niches. Along with Dr. Salvador, Dr. Scholtz developed the Systematic Creativity methodology for turning user requirements into interface designs. Dr. Scholtz has also worked as a consultant in evaluation of user interfaces. She has over 10 years experience in evaluation of user interfaces. Dr. Scholtz has a Ph.D. in Computer Science.

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Abstract

After presenting the motivation and rationale for including usability in government-issued requests for proposals (RFPs), this tutorial will focus on the basic RFP structure and the four sections that should cover usability. Attendees will be given a sample partial RFP that contains some of the usability language needed for the hypothetical project to which they have been assigned. They will work in teams to write additional usability language for inclusion in the specification, statement of work, deliverables, and evaluation criteria.

Biographies

Elizabeth Buie

Elizabeth Buie is a Senior Principal Engineer with Computer Sciences Corporation in its Federal Sector, Civil Group. She has worked in the area of user interface design and development since shortly after joining CSC in 1977, and has been involved in usability engineering since 1982. Elizabeth has supported contracts with a variety of civilian government agencies in the United States and Europe, including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the European Space Agency, the US Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Bureau of Land Management. She chairs CSC's internal Special Interest Group on User Interface Design and Technology. Elizabeth has master's degrees in mathematics and in human development. Elizabeth is a member of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society's Human-Computer Interaction Standards Committee, which has contributed to ISO standards for software ergonomics and is currently developing HFES-200, Human Factors Engineering of Software User Interfaces, as an ANSI accredited standards developing organization. She spoke on this topic at the first two NIST symposia on usability engineering in government systems. Elizabeth was an instigator in the efforts to raise awareness within the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (ACM/SIGCHI) of the special issues and challenges that confront usability engineering in government systems, by cochairing a special interest group session at CHI'94 and a formal workshop at CHI'95, and writing the workshop report for the SIGCHI Bulletin. Elizabeth has also coauthored papers and given presentations on integrating usability engineering with software engineering, taking the position that integration must have these two disciplines collaborate as equals under system engineering and should not place either one within the other.

Charles B. Kreitzberg

Charles B. Kreitzberg, Ph.D. is Chief Executive Officer of Cognetics Corporation, an award-winning user-centered design and consulting firm which specializes in knowledge management systems and legacy re-engineering. His specialty is designing interactive systems which mesh computer technology with human cognition; his goal is to improve human performance -- better education in our schools and increased productivity in the workplace -- through the creation of interactive computer and communications tools.

Dr Kreitzberg works with corporations and government agencies. He is the designer of successful software products, co-author of four textbooks, and has lectured and consulted at corporations and universities, worldwide, including: AT&T, Aetna, Citibank, Educational Testing Service, Harvard University, Princeton University, and The Library of Congress.

He is the co-author with Professor Ben Shneiderman of the seminal work The Elements of Fortran Style (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972) which was the first publication to explore the issues of programming style. He is also co-author, with Professor Shneiderman, of the best-selling textbook Fortran Programming: A Spiral Approach (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975). He has written other books and scientific articles and is a regular columnist for Internet Week.

Dr. Kreitzberg has designed the user interface for many software products. He is also responsible for much of the conceptual work on Hyperties, a software product which was a prototype for the first World Wide Web browser.

Dr. Kreitzberg founded Cognetics Corporation in 1982. Since that time, the company has become a leader in user-centered design. It has won many design awards for its software including the 1993 Technology Award of the American Society for Training and Development, awarded to a company for sustained excellence and innovation over a decade.

Dr. Kreitzberg holds a Masters degree in Computer Science (Rutgers, 1972) and a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology (CUNY, 1978). Formerly, Associate Research Scientist at the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, New Jersey, Dr. Kreitzberg is a licensed psychologist in New York and New Jersey. He is listed in Who's Who (Technology and Media), is a member of the American= Psychological Association, the Association for Computing Machinery and the Usability Professionals Association where he serves as an elected Board member.

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Abstract

This final session of UE3 will give the audience a chance to ask questions of all the presenters in a panel discussion format. We expect that the audience will also provide us with their own war stories, success stories, and food for thought. We are especially interested in your feedback on both the day's tutorials and topics for future "Usability Engineering in Government Systems" events.

Biography

Sharon Laskowski

Dr. Sharon J. Laskowski is a computer scientist and group manager of the Visualization and Virtual Reality Group in the Information Technology Laboratory of the National Institute of Standards and Technology where she is currently developing tools and methods for Web Usability testing. She is also investigating the use of information visualization techniques for information retrieval and exploration. She has also been involved in research into evaluation methodologies for collaborative systems. She is a co-founder and organizer of the NIST series of Usability Engineering in Government Systems symposia. Previously, she conducted research and development in text analysis, information fusion, and plan recognition at the Artificial Intelligence Center of the MITRE Corporation. Dr. Laskowski received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Yale University.

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