USABILITY TESTING IN TECHNOLOGY EDUCATION

Standard 13 of the International Technology Education Association's Standards for Technological Literacy (2000/2002) document states that, "Students will develop abilities to assess the impact of products and systems" (p. 133), Students should be aided in critically assessing products they design, as well as those professionally produced. This can employ many design criteria, such as function, aesthetics, and economic use of materials. However, when students test their own designs, there might be a tendency to test only product function. How fast is their car? How strong is their bridge? Does the hyperlink work? Other design criteria may easily be overlooked. Usability testing is a terrific way for secondary and post-secondary technology students to critically analyze products. It helps them develop an objective view, but often humanizes their outlook by exploring the user interface. Usability As consumers, students typically notice when one product is more user-friendly than another. Many factors can contribute to user-friendliness or "usability. " Jakob Nielsen (1993) lists the following five attributes of usability: * "Leamability: The system should be easy to learn so that the user can rapidly start getting some work done with the system. * "Efficiency: The system should be efficient to use, so that once the user has learned the system, a high level of productivity is possible. * "Memorability: The system should be easy to remember . * "Errors: The system should have a low error rate . if they do make errors they can easily recover from them. Further, catastrophic errors must not occur. * "Satisfaction: The system should be pleasant to use. " (p. 26) Carol Barnum (2002) provides a list of "What usability is not: quality assurances; zero defects; utility of design features; intrinsic in products. " She insists that these terms relate to the product rather than its user interface, noting, "The presence of these qualities may validate a product from the standpoint of utility, while saying little about its usability" (p. 6). In technology education, the past emphases on product design and product function have to be broadened if usability is to become a criterion; a new emphasis would be on the design, function, and harmony of the product-user system. Users Since the evaluation of a product's usability is actually the evaluation of the usability of the product-user system, one early step is to characterize the target user. An identification of users should include relevant demographics and both physical and psychological factors related to using the technology. The conditions or environment of typical use should be identified. Characterizing the user, however, may be difficult without gaining information from actual users, which is where usability testing can be of assistance. Usability Engineering and Usability Testing Usability engineering (Remington, 2000) extends to product design, development of instruction manuals, and even packaging, in an attempt to engineer a product with improved usability. Sometimes, the emphasis on the user is so strong that the design process is termed, "user-centered design. " One critical subset of usability engineering is usability assessment, where information is gained about the usability of a product/system. Common usability assessment techniques include focus groups, surveys, expert evaluations, usability audits, and usability tests (Nielsen & Mack, 1994). Usability tests involve collecting data from actual users as they use a product. Rubin (1994) identifies four common types of usability tests: * Exploratory tests typically occur during a product's early design development, possibly looking at the "the user's conceptual or mental model of the product" (Rubin, 1994, p. 31). * Usability assessment tests typically occur after a working solution has been developed. …