VTechWorks staff will be away for the winter holidays starting Tuesday, December 24, 2024, through Wednesday, January 1, 2025, and will not be replying to requests during this time. Thank you for your patience, and happy holidays!
 

An Exploration of End-User Critical Incident Classification

Simple item page
dc.contributor.authorCapra, Miranda Galadrielen
dc.contributor.committeecochairHartson, H. Rexen
dc.contributor.committeecochairWilliges, Robert C.en
dc.contributor.committeememberSmith-Jackson, Tonya L.en
dc.contributor.departmentIndustrial and Systems Engineeringen
dc.date.accessioned2014-03-14T20:47:47Zen
dc.date.adate2001-11-26en
dc.date.available2014-03-14T20:47:47Zen
dc.date.issued2001-10-18en
dc.date.rdate2002-11-26en
dc.date.sdate2001-11-12en
dc.description.abstractLaboratory usability tests can be a rich source of usability information for software design, but are expensive to run and involve time-consuming data analysis. Expert review of software is cheaper, but highly dependent on the experience of the expert. Techniques are needed that maintain user involvement while reducing both the cost of user involvement and the time required to analyze data. The User Action Framework (UAF) is a classification scheme for usability problems that facilitates data analysis and reusability of information learned from one project to another, but is also reliant on expert interpretation of usability data, and classification can be difficult when user-supplied problem descriptions are incomplete. This study explored end-user classification of self-reported critical incidents (usability issues) using the UAF, a technique that was hoped to reduce expert interpretation of usability problems. It also explored end-user critical incident reporting from a usability session recording, rather than reporting incidents as soon as they occur, a technique that could be used in future studies to compare effectiveness of usability methods. Results indicate that users are not good at diagnosing their own critical incidents due to the level of detail required for proper classification, although observations suggest that users were able to provide usability information that would not have been captured by an expert observer. The recording technique was successful, and is recommended for future studies to further explore differences in the kind of information that can be gathered from end-users and from experts during usability studies.en
dc.description.degreeMaster of Scienceen
dc.identifier.otheretd-11122001-143830en
dc.identifier.sourceurlhttp://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-11122001-143830/en
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10919/35671en
dc.publisherVirginia Techen
dc.relation.haspartMCapra_thesis.pdfen
dc.rightsIn Copyrighten
dc.rights.urihttp://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/en
dc.subjectuser and expert differencesen
dc.subjectUser Action Frameworken
dc.subjectcritical incidenten
dc.subjectusability problem classificationen
dc.titleAn Exploration of End-User Critical Incident Classificationen
dc.typeThesisen
thesis.degree.disciplineIndustrial and Systems Engineeringen
thesis.degree.grantorVirginia Polytechnic Institute and State Universityen
thesis.degree.levelmastersen
thesis.degree.nameMaster of Scienceen

Files

Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
MCapra_thesis.pdf
Size:
5.83 MB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Download

Collections

Masters Theses