Paper Summary: |
The authors discuss the "new usability" and evaluate well how usability concepts and methodologies have matured to meet the new demands of changing technology and ubiquitous environments. The authors conclude that established usability engineering methodologies are ill-suited to the new technologies by pointing out that:
- The usability issues are increasingly demanding and complex,
- User bases are broader, and
- Product timescales are shorter.
And as such, the paper suggests that traditional approaches of ensuring usability are largely meaningless in the field of ubiquitous computing.
The authors believe that when traditional usability testing fails, "the likelihood is, however, that designers will develop a mix of ad hoc, in-house standards for design, many of which are incompatible, lack coherence and are founded on human factors and cognitive science knowledge which has been generated on the basis of a now outdated economic, social, and technological environment".
The paper presents two research priorities:
- "What is the role of usability testing and its relationship to usability inspection and usability enquiry in formulating usability engineering methodologies and tools that can be applied successfully to emerging technologies and applications?"
- "What usability engineering and testing methodologies are required to allow the creation of highly usable technologies and applications for future information appliances and environments?"
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