Usability evaluation of E-books

The objective of this study is to evaluate the usability of electronic books (E-books). An experiment was designed to compare the differences between reading an E-book and a conventional book (C-book) with objective measures. Twenty junior college students, ages sixteen to eighteen, participated in the study. Response measures included reading performance and critical flicker fusion (CFF). The results indicate that reading an E-book causes significantly higher eye fatigue than reading a C-book. Reading a C-book generated a higher level of reading performance than reading an E-book. In addition, females demonstrated better reading performance than males in reading either book.     

一种防范钓鱼网站的方法

网络钓鱼是在线身份窃取的一种。近年来,网络钓鱼成为了在线身份窃取的主流。要防止网络钓鱼,最重要的是让用户能够识别网站的真伪。本文提出了一种让用户能够有效地识别网站真伪的技术:当用户需要辨别网站真伪时,先输入一个私数,上传到服务器;然后,服务器返回一组与此私数相关的特有的防钓码,用户看到这组防钓码,便知网站真假。由于防钓码因由户给出的私数而异,钓鱼者很难伪造,运用此法可有效的防范钓鱼网站。     

一种新的笔式交互范式的可用性评估

笔式用户界面是Post—WIMP界面的一种重要形态,具有自然、和谐的交互特性。尽管笔式用户界面广泛应用于无处不在计算环境中,但很少专门对它的可用性进行评估。针对笔式用户界面的特征,提出了一种新的笔式用户界面范式,基于此范式设计并实现了一个面向教学的笔式交互系统(PenOffice),利用此系统对范式从易学性、效率、出错率和用户满意度这几个方面进行了可用性评估,从中分析了笔式用户界面以及这种新的界面范式的优点和不足。     

SPP: An anti-phishing single password protocol

Most users have multiple accounts on the Internet where each account is protected by a password. To avoid the headache in remembering and managing a long list of different and unrelated passwords, most users simply use the same password for multiple accounts. Unfortunately, the predominant HTTP basic authentication protocol (even over SSL) makes this common practice remarkably dangerous: an attacker can effectively steal users’ passwords for high-security servers (such as an online banking website) by setting up a malicious server or breaking into a low-security server (such as a high-school alumni website). Furthermore, the HTTP basic authentication protocol is vulnerable to phishing attacks because a client needs to reveal his password to the server that the client wants to login.In this paper, we propose a protocol that allows a client to securely use a single password across multiple servers, and also prevents phishing attacks. Our protocol achieves client authentication without the client revealing his password to the server at any point. Therefore, a compromised server cannot steal a client’s password and replay it to another server.Our protocol is simple, secure, efficient and user-friendly. In terms of simplicity, it only involves three messages. In terms of security, the protocol is secure against the attacks that have been discovered so far including the ones that are difficult to defend, such as the malicious server attacks described above and the recent phishing attacks. Essentially our protocol is an anti-phishing password protocol. In terms of efficiency, each run of our protocol only involves a total of four computations of a one-way hash function. In terms of usability, the protocol requires a user to remember only one password consisting of eight (or more) random characters, and this password can be used for all of his accounts.     

Usability risk level evaluation for physical user interface of mobile phone

The mobile phone has become an indispensable device in everyday life. However, many usability problems were generated by the multi-functionality of mobile phones. There was an important increase on the user interface (UI) design and usability. With the introduction of a variety of forms and keypads in mobile phones, the user's need of controllability, grip-stability, and usability were raised in the UI aspect. Therefore, in this study, we investigated the physical user interface (PUI) elements of mobile phones, and defined the degree of usability risk such as key level value, function level value, and grip level value. Also, this study proposed an evaluation framework to quantitatively measure the usability risk in the mobile phone PUI elements. For this, the mobile phone PUI elements were analyzed and classified by key type, function, and form-factor. Hence, in the case study was investigated and evaluated 133 mobile phones in the market by the proposed framework. As a result, the proposed evaluation framework enabled the measurement of the mobile phone usability risk level in the early stages of the concept design. This made possible the prediction of design problems related with the mobile phone PUI.     

Work-domain knowledge in usability evaluation: Experiences with Cooperative Usability Testing

Usability evaluation helps to determine whether interactive systems support users in their work tasks. However, knowledge about those tasks and, more generally, about the work-domain is difficult to bring to bear on the processes and outcome of usability evaluation. One way to include such work-domain knowledge might be Cooperative Usability Testing, an evaluation method that consists of (a) interaction phases, similar to classic usability testing, and (b) interpretation phases, where the test participant and the moderator discuss incidents and experiences from the interaction phases. We have studied whether such interpretation phases improve the relevance of usability evaluations in the development of work-domain specific systems. The study included two development cases. We conclude that the interpretation phases generate additional insight and redesign suggestions related to observed usability problems. Also, the interpretation phases generate a substantial proportion of new usability issues, thereby providing a richer evaluation output. Feedback from the developers of the evaluated systems indicates that the usability issues that are generated in the interpretation phases have substantial impact on the software development process. The benefits of the interpretation phases may be explained by the access these provide both to the test participants’ work-domain knowledge and to their experiences as users.     

Usability evaluation methods for the web: A systematic mapping study

Context

In recent years, many usability evaluation methods (UEMs) have been employed to evaluate Web applications. However, many of these applications still do not meet most customers’ usability expectations and many companies have folded as a result of not considering Web usability issues. No studies currently exist with regard to either the use of usability evaluation methods for the Web or the benefits they bring.

Objective

The objective of this paper is to summarize the current knowledge that is available as regards the usability evaluation methods (UEMs) that have been employed to evaluate Web applications over the last 14 years.

Method

A systematic mapping study was performed to assess the UEMs that have been used by researchers to evaluate Web applications and their relation to the Web development process. Systematic mapping studies are useful for categorizing and summarizing the existing information concerning a research question in an unbiased manner.

Results

The results show that around 39% of the papers reviewed reported the use of evaluation methods that had been specifically crafted for the Web. The results also show that the type of method most widely used was that of User Testing. The results identify several research gaps, such as the fact that around 90% of the studies applied evaluations during the implementation phase of the Web application development, which is the most costly phase in which to perform changes. A list of the UEMs that were found is also provided in order to guide novice usability practitioners.

Conclusions

From an initial set of 2703 papers, a total of 206 research papers were selected for the mapping study. The results obtained allowed us to reach conclusions concerning the state-of-the-art of UEMs for evaluating Web applications. This allowed us to identify several research gaps, which subsequently provided us with a framework in which new research activities can be more appropriately positioned, and from which useful information for novice usability practitioners can be extracted.     

Security Usability

In the security community, we’ve always recognized that our security proposals come with certain costs in terms of usability. Traditionally, that’s the compromise we make to get security. But the market has ruled against us. Time and time again, our fielded secure systems are ignored, bypassed, turned off, or constrained to such a small part of the process that the security result is practically nonexistent. Even worse for our mental self-satisfaction, those systems that claim to deliver security to users simply don’t pass muster--they’re not what we’d like to think of as secure systems.     

Usability laboratories

This article provides a table with summary statistics for the thirteen usability laboratories described in the papers in this special issue. It also gives an introduction to the main uses of usability laboratories in usability engineering and surveys some of the issues related to practical use of user testing and CAUSE tools for computer-aided usability engineering.     

Usability laboratories

Abstract

This article provides a table with summary statistics for the thirteen usability laboratories described in the papers in this special issue. It also gives an introduction to the main uses of usability laboratories in usability engineering and surveys some of the issues related to practical use of user testing and CAUSE tools for computer-aided usability engineering.     

Usability evaluation of voiceprint authentication in automated telephone banking: Sentences versus digits

This paper describes an experiment to investigate the usability of voiceprints for customer authentication in automated telephone banking. The usability of voiceprint authentication using digits (random strings and telephone numbers) and sentences (branded and unbranded) are compared in a controlled experiment with 204 telephone banking customers. Results indicate high levels of usability and customer acceptance for voiceprint authentication in telephone banking. Customers find voiceprint authentication based on digits more usable than that based on sentences, and a majority of participants would prefer to use digits.     

可用性测试平台

阐明了软件可用性测试的重要性及其方法分类,着重说明了用户测试方法的步骤.介绍了所设计的软件可用性测试平台的特点和建设该平台的必要性,通过该平台对鱼眼菜单、单列菜单、级联式菜单进行了可用性测试.在测试用户较少的情况下,实验结果与其它主流实验室的结果相一致,表明了该实验平台的有效性和高效性.最后,对该测试平台可能的改进提出了设想.     

Component-Specific Usability Testing

This paper presents the results of a meta-analysis carried out on the results of six experiments to support the claim that component-specific usability measures are on average statistically more powerful than overall usability measures when comparing different versions of a part of a system. An increase in test effectiveness implies the need for fewer participants in usability tests that study different versions of a component. Three component-specific measures are presented and analyzed: an objective efficiency measure and two subjective measures, one about the ease-of-use and the other about the users' satisfaction. Whereas the subjective measures are obtained with a questionnaire, the objective efficiency measure is based on the number of user messages received by a component. Besides describing the testing method, this paper also discusses the underlying principles such as layered interaction and multiple negative-feedback loops. The main contribution of the work described is the presentation of component-based usability testing as an alternative for traditional holistic-oriented usability tests. The former is more aligned with the component-based software engineering approach, helping engineers to select the most usable versions of a component.