 Usability Testing and User Experience Measurement: |
 Measuring the financial impact of User-Centered Design (19 pages, .pdf).
If you want the business to listen to you, you must speak their language. The case study details the calculations involved to estimate one project's NPV for a former client of mine. |
Usability testing backpacks: Swiss Army vs. Ogio (17 pages, .pdf).
Usability testing is not just for software, web sites, VCRs, mobile phones, cars, or fighter jets. In this group assignment we've proven that you can successfully usability test just about anything, including backpacks. |
| Human Factors in UI design: |
Biological Processing System: Color and Contrast in Vision (13 pages, .pdf).
The properties of the human eye are discussed. The use of color and contrast at Shutterfly.com gets scrutinized and improvement suggestions are offered. |
Preattentive Processing and Pattern Perception (13 pages, .pdf).
The paper discusses some of our most powerful perceptual abilities: extracting salient features from and noticing patterns in our environment. |
Working memory, anxiety, and photography: an evaluation of a digital camera as a tool for enabling creativity under stress (13 pages, .pdf).
While our sensory perception apparatus is admirably robust, our cognitive processing abilities are, sadly, absolutely pathetic by comparison. The paper details the workings of short term memory and central executive, and evaluates Canon 20D digital camera's UI in it's ability to overcome our cognitive shortcomings. |
The role of schemas in user-acceptance of software (7 pages, .pdf).
Mental models help us use what we know about one product to learn how to use another similar one. In this paper, I take a brief look at schemas (a subset of mental models), and evaluate Sun's StarOffice UI in terms of how well it takes advantage of schemas which Microsoft Word users "bring" with them. |
Human Factors Issues in Designing Alarms and Monitors for Critical Care Environments (7 pages, .pdf).
This paper discusses UI solutions that reduce the negative effects of the work environment factors that typically impair the cognitive ability of the people who rely on monitors to make critical decisions. |
The Role of Individual Learning Styles in the Design of Interactive Tutorials (10 pages, .pdf).
Not everyone learns in the same way. The paper discusses the differences among learning styles and proposes design approaches to make learning more accessible. The Award-winning Age of Empires II game tutorial is evaluated as a case study. |
| Information Visualization: |
Designing a multivariate display (12 pages, .pdf).
This paper details the thinking that goes into designing graphs and charts. |
Dynamic Visualizations (11 pages, .pdf).
Basic requirements for dynamic visualization tools are discussed. Case study: an interface prototype for an innovative job-seeking tool that lets job hunters search for jobs by similarity, meaningfully visualize the results, and interact with the result set in real time. |
Visualization Taxonomy (7 pages, .pdf).
The paper presents a system for classifying and selecting visualizations. |
| Prototyping: |
Designing touch screen voting systems: a rich picture exercise (8 pages, .pdf).
Monk and Howard's Rich Picture method helps uncover project stakeholder relationships, needs, and conflicts. In this exercise, the needs of the touch screen voting system are explored and diagrammed. |
Metaphor exploration using a 3x3 method (5 pages, .pdf).
Metaphors can be powerful in helping users learn a new interface by drawing on their existing mental models. In this exercise I explore metaphor possibilities for a car tuning shop application that allows customers to select the performance and visual upgrades that fit their vehicle. |
Keyboard vs. Mouse: GOMS exercise (4 pages, .pdf).
Which is faster: keyboard or mouse? You may be surprised when you read the analysis of these two methods for inserting a table at the end of a document in Microsoft Word. |
