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Abstract
Usability evaluation is now widely recognized as critical to the success of interactive
health care applications. However, the broad range of usability inspection and testing
methods available may make it difficult to decide on a usability assessment plan.
To guide novices in the human-computer interaction field, we provide an overview of
the methodological and empirical research available on the three usability inspection
and testing methods most often used.
We describe two 'expert-based' and one 'user-based' usability method: (1) the heuristic
evaluation, (2) the cognitive walkthrough, and (3) the think aloud.
All three usability evaluation methods are applied in laboratory settings. Heuristic
evaluation is a relatively efficient usability evaluation method with a high benefit-cost
ratio, but requires high skills and usability experience of the evaluators to produce
reliable results. The cognitive walkthrough is a more structured approach than the
heuristic evaluation with a stronger focus on the learnability of a computer application.
Major drawbacks of the cognitive walkthrough are the required level of detail of task
and user background descriptions for an adequate application of the latest version
of the technique. The think aloud is a very direct method to gain deep insight in
the problems end users encounter in interaction with a system but data analyses is
extensive and requires a high level of expertise both in the cognitive ergonomics
and in computer system application domain.
Each of the three usability evaluation methods has shown its usefulness, has its own
advantages and disadvantages; no single method has revealed any significant results
indicating that it is singularly effective in all circumstances. A combination of
different techniques that compliment one another should preferably be used as their
collective application will be more powerful than applied in isolation. Innovative
mobile and automated solutions to support end-user testing have emerged making combined
approaches of laboratory, field and remote usability evaluations of new health care
applications more feasible.