RE: General Usability DetecVS tor

Ah
I see what you tripped on.  Interesting.   

I agree on the individual bit.   And it goes even farther than people who
are blind having different problems from people who are deaf.    Even people
who are blind are individuals and one cannot generalize from one to the
next. 
 
 I'll have to word that better next time.

Gregg

 -- ------------------------------ 
Gregg C Vanderheiden Ph.D. 
Professor - Ind. Engr. & BioMed Engr.
Director - Trace R & D Center 
University of Wisconsin-Madison 


-----Original Message-----
From: Maurizio Boscarol [mailto:maurizio@usabile.it] 
Sent: Monday, May 10, 2004 11:15 AM
To: Gregg Vanderheiden
Cc: w3c-wai-gl@w3.org
Subject: Re: General Usability DetecVS tor

Gregg Vanderheiden wrote:

>Hi Maurizio
>
>   Agree - but interestingly enough - both usability and accessibility are
>individual based.
>
>Thus whether you talk about an aggregate or individual - the same concepts
>would apply.  Unfortunately - we can't design for individuals but for
>groups.  
>  
>

Yes. All I wanted was to point out that this is true both in 
accessibility and in usability. So, to say "usability issues that are 
faced by all users" is a little... uhm... odd. It's not what it is or 
what it should be. I agree that we need grouping. Even set up a scenario 
is a way of grouping, in a sense.

Even to talk of general accessibility, after all, is not really correct, 
because blind users have different problems from color-blind user. So 
the problems is in talking in general. Grouping is needed as a 
satisfying method that can drive the design and the evaluation.

Another point is that time measures need good sampling and statistical 
constraints, of course, so, if we have small groups, timing is not 
really a good way to distinguish group differences. So, if we have small 
group, we need another way to compare problems and UI. Perhaps we need 
some GOMS-like method (1) translation to different category of users. 
Goms can be used to compare the efficiency of GUI in certain tasks. It 
refer to not-disable individual. We could use some similar method to 
compare the efficiency of the same interface between different groups of 
users. In that way we can compare the before-after interfaces for 
different targets of user.

It's just an idea. Needs research contribution, I guess.

>The closest we can come perhaps - and this is nice where we can do it -- is
>to have content whose presentation is tailored to the user.    Even this
>though has raised some concerns. 
>
>I would be interested in your examples.
>  
>

Ok, I'll take the time to make a simple table to express myself in a 
screen-readable mode.. ;-)

Bye

Maurizio Boscarol
http://www.usabile.it/

(1) One of many related link: http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~cs5724/g2/glance.html 
. Reference: S. K. Card et al., "Computer text-editing: An 
information-processing analysis of a routine cognitive skill", in 
Cognitive Psychology, Volume 12, 1980, pp. 32 - 74.

Received on Monday, 10 May 2004 16:25:23 UTC