Usability Inspection Report of NCSTRL

An evaluation report of the www.ncstrl.org site outlining usability problems and solutions to these problems

An Interactive Environment for Dialogue Development: Its Design, Use and Evaluation

The Author's Interactive Didogue Environment (AIDE) of the Dialogue Management System is an integrated set of direct manipulation tools used by a dialogue author to design and implement human-computer interfaces without writing source code. This paper presents the conceptua! dialogue transaction model upon which AIDE is based, describes AIDE, and illustrates how a dialope author develops an interface using AIDE. A preliminary empirical evaluation of the use of AIDE versus the use of a programming language to implement an interface shows very encouraging results

Impact of the Great Recession on Total Employment and Unemployment Rates in the U.S.

Color poster with text, images, maps, and tables.The economic downturn of 2008-09 was so severe that it has become known as the Great Recession, and by most accounts the subsequent recovery has been relatively slow. The most basic method of judging the severity of a recession and the success of a recovery is to look at labor market information. In particular, the unemployment rate and the number of jobs (total employment) are often used for this purpose. This study presents data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for 2007, 2009 and 2011 using maps to describe the recession and recovery at a national level as well as compare the effects across states.University of Wisconsin--Eau Claire Office of Research and Sponsored Programs; Xcel Energy-Eau Claire; Northwestern Bank-Chippewa Falls

UIMS: Toward the Next Generation

First generation User Interface Management Systems (UIMS) have established themselves in both research and commercial areas. This paper discusses improved usability and extension of UIMS to include a broader whole system development life cycle as the basis for evolution of a second generation of UIMS. Problems of first generation UIMS, some informal empirical work that is leading toward an interface development life cycle and UIMS to directions for the anticipated evolution are presented

Trusting Remote Users… Can They Identify Problems Without Involving Usability Experts?

Based on our belief that critical incident data, observed during usage and associated closely with specific task performance are the most useful kind of formative evaluation data for finding and fixing usability problems, we developed a Remote Usability Evaluation Method (RUEM) that involves real users self-reporting critical incidents encountered in real tasks performed in their normal working environments without the intervention of evaluators. In our exploratory study we observed that users were able to identify, report, and rate the severity level of their own critical incidents with only brief training

Synthesis-Oriented Situational Analysis in User Interface Design

Analytic evaluation is a term describing a class of techniques for examining a representation of a user interface design, discovering design flaws and/or predicting user task performance. In our work with analytic evaluation, we have observed limitations on the effectiveness and efficiency of analytic techniques for formative evaluation supporting the iterative design and re-design cycle. Here we support those observations with arguments based on theoretical limitations of the models underlying these techniques. By way of comparison we discuss desirable characteristics for an alternative approach. In our search for such an alternative, we have developed the Task Mapping Model, a substantively different approach to analysis for supporting the user interface design. We briefly describe the Task Mapping Model and give some examples illustrating its desirable characteristics

Impact of the Great Recession on Social Assistance Programs in the Eau Claire Area

Color poster with text, images, and graphs.The economic downturn of 2008-09 was so severe that it has become known as The Great Recession and by most accounts the subsequent recovery has been slow to non-existent. National data reflects a continuing demand for social assistance programs. This suggests that, despite a modest recovery based on labor market measures such as employment and unemployment rates, there seems to be a continuing need for social assistance. This study presents data from a variety of local sources illustrating this prolonged hardship and strain on social service programs in the Chippewa Valley.University of Wisconsin--Eau Claire Office of Research and Sponsored Programs; Xcel Energy-Eau Claire; Northwestern Bank-Chippewa Falls

Building Bridges and Interfaces: Toward the Next Generation of UIMS

User interface management systems (UIMS) have established themselves in both research and commercial arenas. We present several generations in UIMS evolution and discuss some problems of the early generations. In particular, we discuss the problems of a gap between methods used by behavioral scientists and computer scientists during the process of building interfaces. We present an empirical approach to begin bridging this gap and results of our preliminary observations: a human-computer interface development life cycle and recording techniques for interface development, as well as UIMS needed to support them. We conclude with future directions for the evolution of UIMS

Remote Usability Testing Methods a la Carte

Although existing lab-based formative usability testing is frequently and effectively applied to improving usability of software user interfaces, it has limitations that have led developers to turn to remote usability evaluation methods (RUEMs) to collect formative usability data from daily usage by real users in their own real-world task environments. The enormous increase in Web usage, where users can be isolated and the network and remote work settingbecome intrinsic parts of usage patterns, is strong motivation for supplementing lab-based testing with remote usability evaluation methods. Another significant impetus for remote evaluation is the fact that the iterative development cycle for any software, Web application or not, does not end with initial deployment. We review and informally compare several approaches to remote usability evaluation with respect to quantity and quality of data collected and the effort to collect the data

Interactive Tools: Making UIMS Usable

The earliest UIMS provided primarily run-time facilities for interface management and a set of programming tools for the development of application from the implementation requirements with which many tool designers have approached UIMS design, there are also methodological requirements that have been seriously neglected. One reason is that interface design methodology is poorly understood and rarely axiomatic. Nevertheless, it is important that we formulate methodological theories and provide UIMS with tools that support them. This paper proposes a storyboard metaphor for the conceptual design of human-computer interfaces