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By Patricia Anderson Paper prototyping is a simple way to get complex and valuable insight into your user interface. It is a user-centric design technique that can be an effective means of early usability testing. The typical application is software of some sort, be it an app, website, or other software interface. To create paper prototypes, different screens are typically sketched on a series of papers that can be manually navigated by switching the piece of paper you’re looking at. These sketches are usually made without extensive work going into choosing the “final” fonts, colors, or images. Rather, they may have the words, buttons, placeholders for pictures, text boxes and other elements arranged as they might be arranged in the final version to test the readability and understandability of the screens, and how well users can navigate between screens.   Usabilitygeek.com  compiled a list of some of the largest benefits to paper prototyping: User involvement at a...

By Arathi Sethumadhavan and Patricia Anderson  Instructions for Use (IFU) is a frequently discussed and debated topic in the Health Care Human Factors world. How to test them? What do they mitigate? What should be in them? Often, companies despair when it comes to their device’s IFU because it seems like users never bother to read the IFU. So, what is the point in pouring time and resources into developing, testing and validating them? While it is true that many users opt not to read IFUs, they are nevertheless hugely important. “Good” IFUs versus “bad” IFUs make a huge difference not only in user experience, but also in how users perform with products. Think about your own experience with “good” and “awful” instructions. Although few people enjoy building Ikea furniture, their instructions have been appreciated because they are easy to follow, easy to use, and are multilingual because they actually include very few words at all (if any). On the other hand, most of us have e...

By Arathi Sethumadhavan In my last blog post, I wrote about the common usability misconceptions that Philip Kortum identified in his   latest book . In this blog, I will discuss the usability metrics that the author has identified and provide my impressions on the suitability of these metrics to evaluate products. Effectiveness –Effectiveness is the ability of a user to perform a task. –Was the user able to complete the task without any difficulties? Did the user struggle initially but was finally able to complete the task? Was there a use error but did the user recover without any help? –During a usability evaluation, researchers typically capture errors of omission, errors of commission, out of sequence errors, and close calls. Effectiveness can be a useful metric to understand user interactions with a plethora of products from consumer products to medical devices. For example, is the user able to use a microwave to warm his or her food? Were the buttons on th...