Better customer services and increased organizational efficiencies.

STRATEGIC USABILITY

Better customer services and increased organizational efficiencies
  • Increased ease of use and learning
  • Increased trust in system
  • Increased sales, market share and revenues
  • Increased traffic and size of audience
  • Decreased development costs and time
  • Decreased maintenance costs
  • Decreased training and support costs
  • Decreased product liability and associated insurances
  • Improved decision making and effectiveness
Steps towards strategic usability
  • Recognize users and user groups
  • Raise usability awareness at any level in the organization
  • Align usability strategy with business goals
  • Assign usability resources to IT projects
  • Adopt user-centered design and user-driven development
  • Implement a usability routine
  • Make the system fit the users, not the other way around!
  • Control the benefits and downstream effects of usability
  • Integrate usability in strategic decision-making

NEWS

_Our paper "ECOVAL: A Framework for Increasing the Ecological Validity in Usability Testing" has been presented at HICSS'15!

Authors: Suzanne Kieffer, Ugo Sangiorgi, Jean Vanderdonckt
Abstract: The term ecological validity refers to the study of the measurable correspondence between experimental design and ecological setting (i.e., representative users performing real tasks in their natural environment). Therefore, it is important to anyone intending to generalize the conclusions from the particular circumstances of an experiment to wider ecological situations. However, there is no operational definition that enables to objectively quantify the ecological validity of an experimental design. The ECOVAL framework offers a formal starting point to bridge this gap by helping to both define and increase the ecological validity in usability testing. A methodology, a tool and guidelines to increase ecological validity are presented in an industrial case study. The return on investment of increasing ecological validity is examined in terms of user efficiencies and usability practice. Finally, recommendations to increase ecological validity are introduced, contributions discussed, and outlines for future work presented.
Better customer services and increased organizational efficiencies.