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Cooperative usability testing: complementing usability tests with user-supported interpretation sessions

Published: 02 April 2005 Publication History

Abstract

Recent criticism of think-aloud testing (TA) discusses discrepancies between theory and practice, the artificiality of the test situation, and inconsistencies in the evaluators' interpretation of the process. Rather than enforcing a more strict TA procedure, we describe Cooperative Usability Testing (CUT), where test users and evaluators join expertise to understand the usability problems of the application evaluated. CUT consists of two sessions. In the interaction session, the test user tries out the application to uncover potential usability problems while the evaluators mainly observe, e.g. as in TA or contextual inquiry. In the interpretation session, evaluators and test users discuss what they consider the most important usability problems, supported by a video of the interaction session. In an exploratory study comparing CUT to TA, seven evaluators find that interpretation sessions contribute important usability information compared to TA. Also test users found participation in the interpretation session interesting.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    CHI EA '05: CHI '05 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    April 2005
    1358 pages
    ISBN:1595930027
    DOI:10.1145/1056808
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Published: 02 April 2005

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    Author Tags

    1. contextual inquiry
    2. metaphors of human thinking
    3. think aloud
    4. usability testing

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    • (2024)“Customization is Key”: Reconfigurable Textual Tokens for Accessible Data VisualizationsProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3641970(1-14)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
    • (2024)Challenges and recommendations for eHealth usability evaluation with elderly users: systematic review and case studyUniversal Access in the Information Society10.1007/s10209-022-00949-w23:1(455-474)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2024
    • (2023)Talking about Thinking Aloud: Perspectives from Interactive Think-Aloud PractitionersJournal of User Experience 10.5555/3605526.360552818:3(113-132)Online publication date: 20-Jun-2023
    • (2022)Rich Screen Reader Experiences for Accessible Data VisualizationComputer Graphics Forum10.1111/cgf.1451941:3(15-27)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2022
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    • (2017)Users' design feedback in usability evaluationHuman-centric Computing and Information Sciences10.1186/s13673-017-0100-y7:1(1-19)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2017
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    • (2017)Bringing Content Understanding into Usability Testing in Complex Application Domains—a Case Study in eHealthDesign, User Experience, and Usability: Theory, Methodology, and Management10.1007/978-3-319-58634-2_25(327-341)Online publication date: 14-May-2017
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