About the Speaker

Scott Weiss, Principal of Usable Products Company, is an Information Architect, and author of Handheld Usability (John Wiley & Sons: 2002). He is a frequent lecturer on the topic of usability and information architecture both in the U.S. and abroad. Scott’s design work can be seen on more than 90 percent of computer desktops worldwide, including elements of both Macintosh and Windows 95. Visit Scott's web site.

STC UUX Community Newsletter
Usability Interface

Report from the UsabilityNJ Meeting on Usability Engineering Benchmarking

By Richard D. Herring, Secretary, and Cindy Lu

On 17 March, Scott Weiss gave a presentation to members of UsabilityNJ about benchmarking usability engineering.

Scott's talk was very practical, very thorough, and very welcome. He generously shared methods for conducting usability research for mobile devices. Typical usability sessions can be 60-90 minutes long and there is much to learn about them.

The presentation and discussion touched on many aspects of testing and data collection:

• The optimum length of usability sessions (Sixty minutes)
• Use the term "User Interviews" instead of usability studies to reassure people that they are not being "studied" or, worse, “tested”
• The difference between qualitative and quantitative research
• His company's functional organization
• Benchmarking steps for devices
• User interview tips and scheduling
• Rating Scales - recording equipment and video archiving

Once usability tests are completed, it is vital to communicate results and insights effectively. Using the correct metrics to communicate the findings is important. Scott recommends the SUM (summated usability metric) to present the result. He believes that SUM is the most successful metric for measuring usability in quantitative usability studies.