Description of implementation and its issues - Essay Example

? Report II: of Implementation and its Issues Expert reviews Expert review is a way of testing usability, by bringing experienced experts who specialize in usability testing on board, in order to evaluate the usability of an interface. When one or more human factors experts are involved in evaluation of an interface, this is referred to as Heuristic evaluation of usability Audit. The experts who are included in the evaluation are charged with the responsibility of measuring the usability, effectiveness and efficiency of the interface founded on Jakob Nielsen definition (Heuristic Evaluation par 1). Nielsen’s Usability Heuristics, which have persistently developed in reply to new devices and user research, include consistency and standards; visibility of system status; error prevention; flexibility and efficiency of use; recognition rather than recall; help and documentation; user control and freedom, aesthetic and minimalist design; help users recognize, recover and diagnose from errors; and match between system and the real world. User-based evaluations User-based evaluation methods involve identification of representative tasks, representative users, and designing of a procedure for identifying the problems that users face while attempting to use a certain software product in their undertakings. During the development, testing, design stage of software development, the two types of users’ evaluations that are performed include formative evaluations (used to gather information for design) and summative evaluations (used to document efficiency, effectiveness, and user satisfaction of a product). Model-based evaluations A replica of the human information processor has been designed founded on information drawn from psychology research regarding human’s memory, perception and cognition system. This model has integrated capabilities of long-term and short-term memory, together with capabilities of human audio and visual processing. Also included are times for cognition motor processing and processing. This model allows interactions of human- computer researchers in order to evaluate user interfaces on the basis of the model’s performance. Tools for evaluating information systems Questionnaires For a long time, questionnaires have been used to evaluate user interfaces (Root and Draper 87). They can be used in paper form or electronically (for example surveymonkey.com). Different questions are designed to specifically evaluate components of reliability, validity, and usability of the User Interface (Tullis and Albert 317). Currently, there are multiples of online survey services that can be used for this purpose, including survey monkey, KeySurvey, WebSurveyor, QuestionPro, and Free Online Surveys. I will do further research to identify the best survey services to use. Choice of questionnaires is mainly motivated by their ease of grasping of many people and the power of showing many audiences. Checklist Although many checklists are designed for assessment of hardware, they can also be used for software assessment. The checklist that will be used in evaluation of user interface will be based on a simple concept. Each design principle will be featured as an individual entry in the list. To indicate weighing of importance, a space will be indicated after each entry, followed by a space to indicate approximation of compliance. The last space will include notes on whether remarks have been made to allude to definite design deficiencies or any other related information. The evaluation of checklist will be based on evaluation of User Systems Interface. There are six general functional areas of USI design that will be covered including data entry, design, data display, user guidance, sequence control, data transmission, and data protection. Report III: Final description of system issues and solutions Why is it important to understand who are the stakeholders and their interaction with the user interface? Understanding of the stakeholders and their interaction with the UI is very important in supporting the involvement of end users as a way of enhancing effective development and implementation of UI. Furthermore, research has shown that successful implementation of information systems is not dependent on technical aspects only. Instead, managers and end users have been more and more included in the development of UI with the aim of improving the probability of successful implementation. In particular, the understanding of non systems specialists with the aim of involving them in the implementation process has become so common nowadays, hence helping in reducing resistance to systems implementation. As the development of organizational-wide information systems come to reality, it becomes even more important to understand the needs of a wider range of stakeholders. In such situations, it is common to find the attention of the systems shifting from the end-users to external parties, who are critical in participating in decision-making at strategic or managerial level (Pouloudi and Whitley 14). Failure to understand who the stakeholders are is likely to have significant implications because the exchange of information between them is critical in expressing their interactions. As such, in order to better understand these interactions, it is important to study needs of the organizational and inter-organizational settings – this helps in taking into account of the information systems as well as the stakeholders themselves. In addition, it is imperative to put into account the fact that many contemporary information systems have strategic impacts for their user entities. As such, failing to understand the stakeholders who are not directly involved in the information systems is misleading. In support of this understanding of stakeholders, Lederer and Mendelow delves into the settings of an information system department and maintains that this incorporates the environment of the host entity as well as all things that are beyond the borders of the entity’s information system department (205). Therefore, understanding of the stakeholders and their interactions with the information systems can be a useful method of exposing the conflict between stakeholders, which in effect can help them in seeking coalitions, understanding different opinions, and managing conflicts and expectations. Just like any other component of information system, understanding the stakeholders in respect to User Interface is equally important as its failure can lead to multiple impediments as discussed in this paper. Works Cited Heuristic Evaluation. “Usability First” Screening capturing software for IOS 2013. Web. 25 May 2013. Lederer, A. L. and Mendelow, A. L. The Impact of the Environment on the Management of Information Systems. Information Systems Research, 1.2 (1990): 205-222. Print. Pouloudi, A. and Whitley, E. A. Stakeholder identification in interorganizational systems: gaining insights for drug use management systems. European Journal of Information Systems, 6.1 (1997): 1-14. Print. Root Robert W and Steve, Draper. Proceedings of ACM CHI'83 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. New York: SAGE, 1983. Print. Tullis, Tom and Bill Albert. Measuring the User Experience: Collecting, Analyzing, and Presenting Usability Metrics. London: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2008. Print. Read More