The User-Reported Critical Incident Method for Remote Usability Evaluation

Much traditional user interface evaluation is conducted in usability laboratories, where a small number of selected users is directly observed by trained evaluators. However, as the network itself and the remote work setting have become intrinsic parts of usage patterns, evaluators often have limited access to representative users for usability evaluation in the laboratory and the users' work context is difficult or impossible to reproduce in a laboratory setting. These barriers to usability evaluation led to extending the concept of usability evaluation beyond the laboratory, typically using the network itself as a bridge to take interface evaluation to a broad range of users in their natural work settings. The over-arching goal of this work is to develop and evaluate a cost-effective remote usability evaluation method for real-world applications used by real users doing real tasks in real work environments. This thesis reports the development of such a method, and the results of a study to: • investigate feasibility and effectiveness of involving users with to identify and report critical incidents in usage • investigate feasibility and effectiveness of transforming remotely-gathered critical incidents into usability problem descriptions • gain insight into various parameters associated with the method.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Computer Science

Department dc:contributor.department

Computer Science

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

1997

Author dc:creator

• Castillo, Jose Carlos

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Hartson, H. Rex

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Williges, Robert C.
• Hix, Deborah S.
• Rosson, Mary Beth

• post deployment
• user-reported
• remote usability method
• usability method
• remote usability evaluation
• usability data
• user-initiated
• critical incidents

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Dc Identifier Other

etd-102798-105851

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/35513