Before Reding Seminare 2

Chapter 13 introduces the DECIDE framwork wich is a tool to help you plan evaluation.Decide stands for

• Determine the goals

First step is to identifying goals, the goals guide the evaluation by helping to determine its reach.

• Explore the questions

By breaking down questions you can arrow down specific sub-questions to make the evaluation more punctual. If even more specific issues need to be addressed sub-questions can be broken down to finer problems. 

• Choose the evaluation methods

After identifying your goals and formulated some questions, you choose your evaluation method. Your choice will depend on what data is needed to answer the questions and which theories or frameworks are appropriate to your context. Usability evaluation typically deals with whether or not the system meets the requirements, it rarely explain the reasons behind the problem.Formative evaluation helps to design the system, iterative testing. Summative evaluation tests the entire system at the end.Sometimes, combinations of methods are used as they gives a broad picture of how well the design meets the usability and user experience goals that were identified during the requirements activity.

• Identify the practical issues

It helps to know in advance witch practical issues to consider when conducting an evaluation. Issues that should be taken into account include access to appropriate participants, facilities, and equipment, whether schedules and budgets are realistic, and whether the evaluators have the appropriate expertise to conduct the study.

• Decide how to deal with the ethical issues

Participants' privacy has to be protected. A coding system should be used to record each participant's data and, the code and the person's demographic(name, employment, education, financial status etc.) details should be stored separately from the data.

• Evaluate, analyze, interpret, and present the data.

Different evaluation methods have different degrees of reliability. 
Validity is concerned with whether the evaluation method measures what it is intended to measure, this includes both the method and the way it it performed.

Bias occurs when the results are distorted, they may selectively gather data that they think is important.Two aspects play a big role in the evaluation; practical constraints i.e tight schedules or low budget,  and ethical considerations i.e. confidential information(medical records) or information that is private.

Chapter 15

Inspection methods typically involve an expert role-playing the users for whom the product is designed, analyzing aspects of an interface, and identifying any potential usability problems by using a set of guidelines. Heuristic evaluation and walkthroughs can be used at any stage of a design project. They can also be used to complement user testing.

Heuristic evaluation in which experts, guided by a set of usability principles, evaluate whether user-interface elements, such as dialog boxes, menus, navigation structure, online help, and so on, conform to tried and tested principles.

Walkthroughs are an alternative approach to heuristic evaluation for predicting users' problems without doing user testing. Most walkthrough methods do not involve users.

Lifelogging is another interesting variation that can be used for evaluation as well. A typically, lifelogging involves recording GPS location data and personal interaction data on cell phones.