Usability Engineering Development and Evaluation Methods

Knowledge of user interface design principles alone does not produce a quality user Interface. A successful design features frequent and meaningful user input to guide successive iterations of the software. Participants will learn to use methods and techniques for developing evaluation and test plans for system usability. In addition, students will learn the role of evaluation and how to observe and collect relevant data, design and conduct experiments, and perform interpretive and predictive evaluation. This one-day course will combine lectures with a project.

Objective:
Students in this one-day intensive course will learn strategies and techniques for evaluating user interface designs. Participants will be provided with a solid theoretical basis and practical set of methods by which they can evaluate user interfaces and system usability. This course is appropriate for software analysts, user interface designers, software engineers, and software support specialists.

Topics:
2. Introduction to usability engineering
3. Data collection
4. Usability engineering
5. Evaluation methods
6. Conclusion

Outcomes (skills learned):

	Prepare a usability specification
	Construct an evaluation plan
	Apply a practical set of methods for assessing the usability of designs
	Use appropriate usability engineering methods for analyzing and comparing products
	Identify key differences between different approaches to evaluation
	Select different methods for collecting and analyzing data