Usability Evaluation

What?

Evaluating an I-TV service for Usability is critical to its' success. The end user population is very different to the PC user population - many I-TV subscribers have never even used a PC! The I-TV service needs to be designed to be as straightforward and intuitive as possible. For two important reasons a Usability evaluation is the only way to meet this challenge:

1. There are as yet no established conventions that designers can adhere to in order to design truly usable I-TV services. Only by actually testing the service with representative users can the level of Usability be determined and information derived to increase that level. 

2. Focus groups and other market research techniques have very limited value. Because it is a new technology people find it very difficult to articulate how they could use it. Providing people with one-to-one practical experience yields much more informative findings.

We recruit a representative sample of the I-TV services' target audience and ask them to perform a series of tasks that are typical of those a user would attempt in the real world (e.g. On a travel service a task may be: 'Book the cheapest available flight to Tenerife for June 22 departing after 5pm'). While performing the tasks, at our state of the art Usability facilities, the users are observed and recorded. Afterwards participants are interviewed to gather further information about their experience.

We use specialised software to both collect and interpret participant behaviours. In addition to identifying Usability problems our approach enables us to make recommendations to rectify them. These recommendations allow action to be taken the very same day.

There are three key deliverables:

Usability report - detailed document outlining our methodology, results and their interpretation.

Video highlights - edited video clips of the most informative parts of the tests.

Presentation - an oral presentation communicating the most important findings and recommendations.