Evaluating the Usability of a Mobile Collaborative System:: Exploring Two Different Laboratory Approaches
Jesper Kjeldskov, Mikael B. Skov · VBN Forskningsportal (Aalborg Universitet) · 2003
Several years of research in industry and academia has shown that usability issues influence users' interactions and perceptions of the software products.High usability may prove critical in the success and survival of a product.The diffusion of new advanced technologies seems to challenge established ways of conducting usability evaluations.E.g. several mobile collaborative systems are difficult to evaluate in their natural inhabitant since the use situation is very complex involving distributed work tasks and actions while other mobile collaborative systems deal with safety-critical issues involving risks for people and equipment.This paper describes an exploratory study of two different approaches to usability evaluation of the same mobile collaborative system for coordinating work tasks on a large container ship.The two evaluations are based on an expert evaluation (heuristic inspection) and a user-based evaluation (usability testing with the think-aloud protocol).The two evaluations were conducted in laboratory settings in order to identify potential strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches.The primary result of the study is that from the heuristic inspection it is difficult to identify usability problems related to the support for collaborative work.The reason for this is that heuristic inspection is conducted centralized.The problems identified in the heuristic inspection more concern general interaction issues.In the think-aloud evaluation on the other hand, a large number of collaboration related usability problems were revealed.