Rebecca Baker, PhD

One of the trickiest things as a designer (or, really, as a human being) is working with people in real time. Being able to listen, react, persuade, observe, adjust – communicate effectively – is difficult. Wouldn’t it be great if you could just wave your hand and say “These are the designs you’re looking for….”? Well, my young padawans, being able to understand and be understood is not a magic trick – it is a real, learnable skill. This talk will outline steps I have found useful over the… 展开

One of the trickiest things as a designer (or, really, as a human being) is working with people in real time. Being able to listen, react, persuade, observe, adjust – communicate effectively – is difficult. Wouldn’t it be great if you could just wave your hand and say “These are the designs you’re looking for….”? Well, my young padawans, being able to understand and be understood is not a magic trick – it is a real, learnable skill. This talk will outline steps I have found useful over the years in teaching others how to understand who you are talking to and help them understand you.

Remember: “If no mistake have you made, yet losing you are, a different game you should play.”-Yoda 收起

Choosing the right users and the right context are crucial. This talk uses fictitious and fanciful examples to illustrate real problems of user selection, lab environment, remote testing, and avoiding confounds.

Stories provide a powerful way to illustrate problems, bring context, and solve problems. This talk walks through how to use stories at all stages of a user experience process as well as the problems you may encounter.

Touch mobile interfaces have become commonplace in our daily lives. While touch interfaces were previously in common use only for entertainment and social networking apps, many large software firms are now designing touch interfaces for mobile apps that provide extensions to enterprise software, giving customers access to functionality that had previously required them to be on a Web site or application. Because the functionality of these apps tends to be complex, having a practical, reliable… 展开

Touch mobile interfaces have become commonplace in our daily lives. While touch interfaces were previously in common use only for entertainment and social networking apps, many large software firms are now designing touch interfaces for mobile apps that provide extensions to enterprise software, giving customers access to functionality that had previously required them to be on a Web site or application. Because the functionality of these apps tends to be complex, having a practical, reliable usability evaluation method for touch mobile interfaces is vital. 收起

Because usability testing is relatively expensive and time consuming, executives and development leads who have never observed a test session often dismiss testing as unnecessary and devalue the data that comes out of usability studies. However, with advances in technology over the last ten years, the ability to do usability testing with remote users has increased significantly, both reducing the investment in time and money and expanding the reach of researchers. Remote usability testing lets… 展开

Because usability testing is relatively expensive and time consuming, executives and development leads who have never observed a test session often dismiss testing as unnecessary and devalue the data that comes out of usability studies. However, with advances in technology over the last ten years, the ability to do usability testing with remote users has increased significantly, both reducing the investment in time and money and expanding the reach of researchers. Remote usability testing lets us get access to users from across the globe, ensuring a more representative set of results. This is vital in our hyper-connected reality. And we can now accomplish this without traveling or having a dedicated lab. Remote usability testing is a welcome addition to any researcher’s arsenal—particularly as we try to fit data collection into agile sprints and work within the constraints of an increasingly lean bottom line. 收起

Conducting usability tests is a time and resource intensive process. The ability to do remote testing significantly reduces the cost associated with testing while still providing rich feedback. However, mobile touch interfaces provide a unique challenge for remote testers. This paper compares the results of testing an application on a mobile touch device (the iPod Touch) and an emulator using a between subject test. In it, we examine the differences in time on task, usability issues discovered,… 展开

Conducting usability tests is a time and resource intensive process. The ability to do remote testing significantly reduces the cost associated with testing while still providing rich feedback. However, mobile touch interfaces provide a unique challenge for remote testers. This paper compares the results of testing an application on a mobile touch device (the iPod Touch) and an emulator using a between subject test. In it, we examine the differences in time on task, usability issues discovered, and task completion. Results suggest that emulators can be used to detect some but not all usability issues and that they may provide some false positives as well. Further research is required to separate issues with the emulator vs. device from the remote vs. in-person test environment. 收起

Science fiction has long promised the digitalization of books. Characters in films and television routinely check their palm-sized (or smaller) electronic displays for fast-scrolling information. However, this very technology, increasingly prevalent in today's world, has not been embraced universally. While the convenience of pocket-sized information pieces has the techno-savvy entranced, the general public still greets the advent of the e-book with a curious reluctance. This lack of enthusiasm… 展开

Science fiction has long promised the digitalization of books. Characters in films and television routinely check their palm-sized (or smaller) electronic displays for fast-scrolling information. However, this very technology, increasingly prevalent in today's world, has not been embraced universally. While the convenience of pocket-sized information pieces has the techno-savvy entranced, the general public still greets the advent of the e-book with a curious reluctance. This lack of enthusiasm seems strange in the face of the many advantages offered by the new medium - vastly superior storage capacity, searchability, portability, lower cost, and instantaneous access. This dissertation addresses the need for research examining the reading comprehension and the role emotional response plays in the perceived performance on e-document formats as compared to traditional paper format. This study compares the relative reading comprehension on three formats (Kindle, iTouch, and paper) and examines the relationship of subject's emotional response and relative technology exposure as factors that affect how the subject perceives they have performed on those formats. This study demonstrates that, for basic reading comprehension, the medium does not matter. Furthermore, it shows that, the more uncomfortable a person is with technology and expertise in the requested task (in this case, reading), the more they cling to the belief that they will do better on traditional (paper) media - regardless of how well they actually do. 收起

Conducting usability tests with remote users require unique approaches and techniques. Remote users often have requirements that differ significantly from local users, as the technology is not wholly contained in a controlled usability lab. Based on the authors’ experience with remote usability techniques, this paper provides insights and practical tips about a technology used to host and monitor remote usability tests, users’ reactions to the testing technology, and the communication rhythm… 展开

Conducting usability tests with remote users require unique approaches and techniques. Remote users often have requirements that differ significantly from local users, as the technology is not wholly contained in a controlled usability lab. Based on the authors’ experience with remote usability techniques, this paper provides insights and practical tips about a technology used to host and monitor remote usability tests, users’ reactions to the testing technology, and the communication rhythm within the testing organization. 收起

Content accessibility is a key feature in highly usable Web sites, but reports in the popular press typically report that 95% or more of all Web sites are inaccessible to users with disabilities. The present study is a content accessibility compliance audit of 50 of the Web's most popular sites, undertaken to determine if content accessibility can be conceived and reported in continuous, rather than dichotomous, terms. Preliminary results suggest that a meaningful ordinal ranking of content… 展开

Content accessibility is a key feature in highly usable Web sites, but reports in the popular press typically report that 95% or more of all Web sites are inaccessible to users with disabilities. The present study is a content accessibility compliance audit of 50 of the Web's most popular sites, undertaken to determine if content accessibility can be conceived and reported in continuous, rather than dichotomous, terms. Preliminary results suggest that a meaningful ordinal ranking of content accessibility is not only possible, but also correlates significantly with the results of independent automated usability assessment procedures. 收起