USABILITY TESTING IN TECHNOLOGY EDUCATION
Jim Flowers · 2005
Standard 13 of International Technology Education Association's Standards for Technological Literacy (2000/2002) document states that, will develop abilities to assess impact of products and systems (p. 133), Students should be aided in critically assessing products they design, as well as those professionally produced. This can employ many design criteria, such as function, aesthetics, and economic use of materials. However, when students test their own designs, there might be a tendency to test only function. How fast is their car? How strong is their bridge? Does hyperlink work? Other design criteria may easily be overlooked. Usability testing is a terrific way for secondary and post-secondary technology students to critically analyze It helps them develop an objective view, but often humanizes their outlook by exploring user interface. Usability As consumers, students typically notice when one is more user-friendly than another. Many factors can contribute to user-friendliness or Jakob Nielsen (1993) lists following five attributes of usability: * Leamability: system should be easy to learn so that user can rapidly start getting some work done with system. * Efficiency: system should be efficient to use, so that once user has learned system, a high level of productivity is possible. * Memorability: system should be easy to remember ... * Errors: system should have a low error rate ... if they do make errors they can easily recover from them. Further, catastrophic errors must not occur. * Satisfaction: system should be pleasant to use.... (p. 26) Carol Barnum (2002) provides a list of What is not: quality assurances; zero defects; utility of design features; intrinsic in products. She insists that these terms relate to rather than its user interface, noting, The presence of these qualities may validate a from standpoint of utility, while saying little about its usability (p. 6). In technology education, past emphases on design and function have to be broadened if is to become a criterion; a new emphasis would be on design, function, and harmony of product-user system. Users Since evaluation of a product's is actually evaluation of of product-user system, one early step is to characterize target user. An identification of users should include relevant demographics and both physical and psychological factors related to using technology. conditions or environment of typical use should be identified. Characterizing user, however, may be difficult without gaining information from actual users, which is where testing can be of assistance. Usability Engineering and Usability Testing Usability engineering (Remington, 2000) extends to design, development of instruction manuals, and even packaging, in an attempt to engineer a with improved usability. Sometimes, emphasis on user is so strong that design process is termed, user-centered design. One critical subset of engineering is assessment, where information is gained about of a product/system. Common assessment techniques include focus groups, surveys, expert evaluations, audits, and tests (Nielsen & Mack, 1994). Usability tests involve collecting data from actual users as they use a product. Rubin (1994) identifies four common types of tests: * Exploratory tests typically occur during a product's early design development, possibly looking at the user's conceptual or mental model of product (Rubin, 1994, p. 31). * Usability assessment tests typically occur after a working solution has been developed. …