Evaluating an Inspection Technique for Use Case Specifications - Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis

Natasha Valentim, Tayana Uchôa Conte, José Carlos Maldonado · 2015

Usability inspections in early stages of the development process help revealing problems that can be corrected at a lower cost than at advanced stages of the development. The MIT 1 (Model Inspection Technique for Usability Evaluation) is a usability inspection technique, which aims to anticipate usability problems through the evaluation of use cases. This technique was evaluated using a controlled experiment aimed at measuring its efficiency and effectiveness, when compared to the Heuristic Evaluation (HEV) method. According to quantitative results, the MIT 1 exceeded the HEV in terms of effectiveness and obtained a similar performance in terms of efficiency. In other words, the MIT 1 allows finding more problems than the HEV. On the other hand, the subjects spent more time finding these problems using MIT 1. Moreover, the MIT 1 was considered easy to use and useful by the subjects of the study. We analysed the qualitative data using the procedures from the Grounded Theory (GT) method and results indicate improvement opportunities.

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