allipuram.com: User Experience Consultant from India

Important Usability Glossary

Accessibility

The attributes and characteristics of a system that allow people with limited vision, hearing, dexterity, cognition or physical mobility to interact effectively with the system. Standards and guidelines are available, and standards may be legally enforced in some markets.  Accessibility aids, such as screen readers, may be added to a system to allow people with disabilities to use those systems.

Card Sorting

A method for organizing information that involves sorting a series of cards into groups that make sense to the participants.  Each card represents a single term, function or object.  Card sorting helps to reveal users’ mental models, or patterns that the end users would expect to find.

Contextual Inquiry

A semi-structured field interviewing method based on a set of principles that allow it to be molded to different situations. This technique is generally used at the beginning of the design process and is good for getting rich information, but can be complex and time consuming. The four principles are:

Focus - plan for the inquiry based on a clear understanding of your purpose
Context - go to the customers’ workplace and watch them do their own work
Partnership - talk to customers about their work and engage them in uncovering unarticulated aspects of work
Interpretation - develop a shared understanding with the customer about the aspects of work that matter

Ethnography

The process of gathering information about users and tasks directly from users in their normal work, home or leisure environment.  Traditional ethnography focuses on long-term studies spanning weeks, months, or even years.  Information may be collected through observation, interviews, audio or video recording, observer logs, artifact collection, diaries and photographs. Ethnography is a valuable source of data for creating personas, scenarios and storyboards

Heuristic

A usability guideline for evaluating a user interface, which can be used to identify design problems.  Usability heuristics often need to be adjusted depending on the interface and the technology used. There are lists of heuristics that have been compiled by various people and organizations that are commonly used for this method.

Human Factors

The multidisciplinary study of human biological, physical, psychological, and social characteristics in relation to environments, objects and services. The practice of human factors applies to the design, operation, and evaluation of systems to ensure that that they are safe, efficient, comfortable and aesthetically pleasing to humans.

HCI
A discipline concerned with the design,evaluation and implementation of interactive computing systems for human use and with the study of major phenomena surrounding them. (HCI Bibliography,

Information Architecture
The process of organizing information including the structure, design, layout and navigation in a way that is easy for people to find, understand and manage the information.

Interaction Design (ID)
The creation of behavior and communication tools and processes that facilitate communication between humans and objects, services, and physical or virtual environments, and that allow manipulation of those objects, services, and environments.  It is important to study the flow of information and the discourse between the human and the interface including feedback and stimulus-response over a period of time.

Persona
Fictional person created to model and describe the goals, needs, and characteristics of a specific type or group of users.  Does not describe a real, individual user nor an average user.  Often includes made-up personal details to make the fictional person more “real”.

Prototype
An experimental design of the whole or part of a product used for illustration or testing purposes.

Scenario
A story which has the key elements of a realistic situation when the user would interact with the system being designed or evaluated.  The scenario includes consideration of the user’s goals, tasks and interaction.  Scenarios can be created for user groups, workflows or tasks to explore, understand and test the different types of needs and goals.

STORY BOARD
Sequence of illustrations representing a process.  Often used to outline the behavior and flow of interaction with a product or system

Task
The procedures that include goals, steps, skills, start state, inputs, end state, and outputs required to accomplish an activity.  They can be organized into larger tasks such as driving to work and sub-tasks such as opening the car door.

Taxonomy
A scheme for classifying a body of knowledge and defining the relationships among the pieces.  Sometimes referred to as a controlled vocabulary, a taxonomy is often used to classify content to aid in the creation of information architecture

Usability
A measure of the degree to which a product can be used by specified users or groups to achieve specific goals of effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in a specified context of use.  Factors affecting this measure include learnability, readability, aesthetics, safety and error frequency.  Another significant factor is keeping cost-effectiveness within acceptable levels for human cost measured in terms of tiredness, discomfort, embarrassment, frustration and personal effort.  Keeping cost-effectiveness within acceptable levels increases user satisfaction, which in turn causes continued and enhanced usage of the system. 

User Experience

Every aspect of the user’s interaction with a product, service, or company that make up the user’s perceptions of the whole.  User experience design as a discipline is concerned with all the elements that together make up that interface, including layout, visual design, text, brand, sound, and interaction. UE works to coordinate these elements to allow for the best possible interaction by users.

User-Centered Design (UCD)

An approach or philosophy that emphasizes early and continuous involvement of users in the design and evaluation process.

Wireframe

Rough outline of navigation and content elements that make up a user interface.  Typically visual design and precise layout are not addressed.

Usability Engineering (Human Factors Engineer)

The disciplined application of usability practices to assess the needs and abilities of users, in conjunction with the business requirements, practices, and processes of an organization.  These are combined to develop an effective user experience, and to integrate that experience into a product or service. Usability engineering also encompasses the business and interpersonal skills to work effectively with the business and development organizations to integrate usability practices and goals within the overall development, marketing, support, training, and quality assurance processes of the product group.