Previously I have written about how usability is defined. Now I am going to discuss how a method known as cognitive walkthrough can be used to evaluate the usability of an application without hiring test users. 😲😊 The cognitive walkthrough is useful in capturing learnability issues. (more…)
Making an interface is a time consuming task. Hardly any framework makes it as easy as they promise. And sometimes you just need to prototype an idea to see if it really works. That's when different ways of prototyping come in handy. 😊 (more…)
When making software, one will automatically want to believe in the result being useful. Why wouldn't it be? After all, the software product is built to solve a task, so it should be useful for the task, right? This is not necessarily the case. Nielsen defines usefulness of software by two key terms: utility and usability. In this post, I am going to walk you through these concepts. 🚶🏼 (more…)
The biggest misconception about usability is that you would always need to have real test users to improve the user experience. There are however more economical ways to make improvements into your application's user interface. Today we are going to take a look at workload and missing information content. (more…)
Lately, I have put much thought into usability in video games. Back in the days, we were used to games being not-so-user-firendly. Such as Super Mario, a platformer that doesn't let you save is just as usable as Microsoft Word without save feature. Of course, if you could save your progress anytime in Super Mario, it would be as usable as Word when it comes to saving, but it would take a part of the game out. It would become too easy if you never had to start from the beginning after dying. Therefore, there's a tradeoff! 🤔 (more…)
I entered the classroom and looked at the teacher's desk. The professor who usually gave the classes wasn't there, but a student who looked a bit lost had taken his place. He wasn't even looking at his computer when he was typing. Was he trying to show off, I wondered. (more…)