Jakob Nielsen s Usability Engineering

Nielsen, Jakob. Usability Engineering. Chestnut Hill, MA: AP Professional, 1993.

User interface development is a difficult subject to write about. User interface books written by practitioners are typically the most relevant, since they discuss current technology and describe lessons learned from practical experience. However, such books are based largely on the opinion of the author and are rarely backed up by research. On the other hand, academic user interface books often have little practical information for programmers and are just plain boring. (How's that for an opinion!) Jakob Nielsen's Usability Engineering strikes a remarkable compromise. Nielsen's information is practical, interesting, well researched, well written, and very readable. And, because the subject of usability engineering is not based on any particular technology, the information is timely.

So, just what is usability engineering? The goal of usability engineering is to create software with the following attributes: learnability, efficiency, memorability, reduction of errors, and overall user satisfaction. Usability engineering is a collection of techniques that strive to obtain these attributes throughout the entire software development process. Since it is difficult for developers to predict what users want and how users will react to a program, the primary focus of usability engineering is working with users to establish program goals and evaluate results.

Usability engineering is similar in concept to user-centered design. One of the biggest problems I have with user-centered design is that it is based on the faulty assumption that developers have no clue how to design user interfaces and that the only way to develop a good user interface is through user testing. Nielsen knows better. Chapter 5, "Usability Heuristics" (which in any other book would be called "Basic Design Principles"), outlines many usability techniques that can be taken for granted in software design. Furthermore, Nielsen presents a realistic view of user-centered design and prototyping. He understands that user testing doesn't have all the answers, that users aren't designers, and that their feedback must be carefully interpreted. He states, "There are two major reasons for alternating between heuristic evaluation and user testing as suggested here. First, a heuristic evaluation pass can eliminate a number of usability problems without the need to `waste users,' who sometimes can be difficult to find and schedule in large numbers. Second, these two categories of usability assessment methods have been shown to find fairly distinct sets of usability problems." This is great practical advice.

I have two minor complaints about this book. The first is that it expends a significant amount of effort describing formal usability measurement techniques. While such information is useful for researchers, it has little value for programmers. The second is that some of the research cited is fairly old. There's no particular reason to think any of the conclusions are wrong, but research based on character-mode user interfaces is clearly dated.

I find what Nielsen calls "discount usability engineering" to be the most useful and interesting information in this book. He understands that developers don't have unlimited budgets or time, so they need to use techniques that are quick and cost-effective. The inability to perform all of the processes described in this book should not be used as an excuse to avoid usability altogether. As Nielsen puts it, "Unfortunately, it seems that `Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien' (the best is the enemy of the good) to the extent that insisting on using only the best methods may result in using no methods at all." Clearly, some usability engineering is better than none. Discount usability engineering consists primarily of user and task observation, scenarios (a minimal prototyping technique), user testing that employs thinking out loud, and heuristic evaluation. You shouldn't feel guilty about not using the ideal usability techniques. (I know I don't.) Instead, try to do the best you can.

This book is definitely a worthwhile read.



Developing User Interfaces for Microsoft Windows
Developing User Interfaces for Microsoft Windows
ISBN: 0735605866
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 334

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