Writing Usability Requirements and Metrics

Another useful article in Usability in the shape of a Q&A post. It has reminded me of the importance of going back to the system/user requirements when putting together a usability evaluation. It’s easy to leave part of this behind and just pluck up evaluation scripts from nowhere, but the evaluation kind of loses its point if it’s not firmly rooted on what the system needs to deliver for the user.

It’s also reassuring with regards to using metrics. I guess people feel that justifiying something with numbers has more force than simply describing an experience, but adding metrics to a usability evaluation does not always work.

Interestingly, this points to work by Jakob Nielsen and Mike Hughes on using stats to add rigour to results. I’ll follow those up as there might be something we can use.