Chapter 15: Evaluation: Inspections, Analytics, and Models

Chapter Introduction | Web Resources | Assignment Comments | Teaching Materials

The websites in this section provide additional information about some of the analytical methods discussed in chapter 15, and examples of their application; particularly in the design of mobile technologies such as cell phones.

http://usableweb.com This site contains links to sites that deal specifically with heuristic evaluation for the web. For example, http://usableweb.com/topics/000606-0-0.html offers useful guidance on how to apply Nielsen's heuristics to website evaluation. http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic Not surprisingly Jakob Nielsen's site has a large section on heuristic evaluation, including his own papers, 'how to' information and a list of references to studies that compare the efficacy of heuristic evaluation with other evaluation methods; particularly user testing and walkthroughs.

http://www.bls.gov/ore/htm_papers/st960160.htm This paper by Michael Levi and Frederick Conrad discusses a study in which heuristic evaluation was used to evaluate a World Wide Web prototype.

Scott MacKenzie's home page - http://www.yorku.ca/mack/ - contains links to his many papers on Fitts' Law and there is also a section with links to introductory material. http://www.yorku.ca/mack/phd.html This link to Scott MacKenzie's (1991) Doctoral Thesis provides a lot of information for those who want to study Fitts' Law in depth.

This site describes the top 10 tools. http://blogs.sitepoint.com/10-web-analytics-packages-for-tracking-your-visitors/ Accenture offers an account of the how to employ analytics on their site: http://www.accenture.com

You can also try out Google Analytics at https://www.google.com/analytics This site contains lots of information about how to use Google analytics. There are also many Youtube tutorials, some of which are available at: http://www.lynda.com/Analytics-tutorials/Google-Analytics-Tips-Tricks-Tutorials/135364-2.html by Corey Koberg.

http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2647364 This paper by researchers at Georgia Tech, USA describes touchscreen interaction for working dogs in domestic settings. They explore how dogs trained to use touchscreens could provide a way for the dogs to communicate critical information to humans. Fitts’ law is used to test the efficacy of different design solutions.