Usability Testing

Usability Testing

Definition:
Testing designed to evaluate the machine/user interface.

Related Discipline:
Human Computer Interaction (HCI): relates to the design, evaluation, implementation, and study of interactive computing systems for human use.

Usability testing and its related field of interest, human-computer interaction, seeks to produce excellent human-computer interface designs and to evaluate such designs against clearly defined criteria.

Newsletters

Every month Human Factors International reviews the most useful developments in user interface research from major conferences and publications. This is the subscription page.
http://www.humanfactors.com/downloads/subscribe.asp

Books

Usability Engineering
by Jakob Nielsen. Published by Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco, 1994.
See detailed table of contents at this site.
www.useit.com/jakob/useengbook.html

Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity
by Jakob Nielsen. New Riders Publishing, Indianapolis, 2000.
See detailed table of contents at this site.
www.useit.com/jakob/webusability/

Usability Inspection Methods
edited by Jakob Nielsen and Robert L. Mack
published by John Wiley & Sons, New York, NY, 1994.
www.useit.com/jakob/inspectbook.html

White Papers & Research Papers

Web Usability Research at Microsoft Corporation
http://research.microsoft.com/~marycz/webchapter.html

Concise, SCANNABLE, and Objective: How to Write for the Web
www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/writing.html<

Ten Usability Heuristics
www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_list.html

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For Further Info Contact
The Webmaster @ info@testfocus.co.za
or Call +27 11 848 7600

Hot URLs
Free searchable online Human Computer Interaction Bibliography (HCI) with over 20 000 records
www.hcibib.org/

Web site of Jacob Nielsen, Usability Author and Expert
www.useit.com

Many useful articles on usability testing are found at
www.humanfactors.com/home/default.asp

Special Interest Groups & Organisations

South African Human-Computer Interaction
Special Interest Group
CHI-SA

This site is aimed at everybody with an interest in developing the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Usability in South Africa. CHI-SA is the South African Chapter of the ACM's (Association for Computing Machinery in the USA ) SIGCHI, as well as being the Special Interest Group for Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) of the Computer Society of South Africa (CSSA).
www.chi-sa.org.za/

British Computer Society SIG:

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is a multidisciplinary field concerned with the application of computer science, psychology, ergonomics and many other disciplines in industry and commerce. Its goal is to facilitate the design, implementation and evaluation of information and communication systems that satisfy the needs of those who own and use them.
www.bcs-hci.org.uk/

ACM SIGCHI brings together people working on the design, evaluation, implementation, and study of interactive computing systems for human use.
www.acm.org/sigchi/

Standards
Web page looking at the usability of usability standards. Ten or so standards are referenced close to the end of the article
www.useit.com/papers/standards.html