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| Each month Dr. Eric Schaffer answers selected questions on usable interface design. | Recent Questions |
| Archived questions and answers about ... |
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December 9, 2005 – submitted by Jacob Hodge of Livingston, TX |
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| Question: What saves you the most time keying a document: A. wysiwyg B. hitting the delete key C. thesaurus D. search-and-replace |
Eric's response: Hmmmm., Are you cross checking your professor's grading with me?
Ok, so which saves more time... The correct answer would be 'B' if there are no other ways of deleting. In some VERY early systems there was no delete capability and a miskeyed entry meant retyping at least the whole line (or punch card). But I don't think this is what you meant. Given SOME delete capability, WYSIWYG will provide the most time savings. This is because it will avoid having to print out the document, review it, and then make adjustments which are again printed and reviewed. It is time consuming not only while online, but also even longer for 'running-to-printer time'. It also wastes paper. |
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September 8, 2005 – submitted by Maria of Barcelona, Spain |
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Question: Sorry if this isn't the correct place to post this question. I would like to know the future strategies for remote usability evaluation. I'm interested in knowing if new technologies or methodologies are going to be introduced that are different from the ones which are being used now (surveys, video conferencing, automatic data gathering, user reported remote evaluation...). Thanks!!! |
Eric's response: Well I can't share all the details. But let me say we have a team that is actively working on remote testing methods. I think there are some exciting innovations in the future. Right now we are still often struggling with firewalls and slow setup times. But I predict we will add some technologies that may make it not only closer to being there, but BETTER then just being there in a simple test. |
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July 13, 2005 – submitted by Maria Beverly of Baltimore, MD |
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| Question: When is fault tolerance enough? | Eric's response: Many people think of fault tolerance as simply a hardware and software issue. A typical example is the ability of a system to manage a power outage or management of a system crash. Yet there is a whole usability side of fault tolerance.
We must consider how the system manages potentially catastrophic user behavior. Many designers carefully work through system crash issues and fail to do even basic due diligence on user risks. The result is often injury or death. I could easily make my whole living just testifying about such poor design practice in liability cases (and have done some of that in the past). A couple of years ago I was working on a system for monitoring blood glucose levels in diabetics. I noticed a couple of points where the user could make mistakes that would lead them to read the sugar levels incorrectly. They could take too much insulin and have a hypoglycemic attack. That can be fatal. So even in fairly innocuous applications we MUST look at the handling of such potentially catastrophic behaviors. |
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February 15, 2005 – submitted by Fadi Abu Bakr of Amman, Jordan |
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| Question: Hi Dr.Eric: I want to ask: do you know from which site I can find the evaluation questionnaire for the information system usability ISO 9241-10, or ISOmetrics questionnaire.
Thank you so much. |
Eric's response: The questionnaire appears to be free for student/research purposes. For industry there is a nominal license fee. |
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