1. Formulate a conception of usability (based on the Issa and Isaias (2015) chapter on HCI and Usability). Use what you've learned about usability from that chapter—but you are not summarizing or repeating their ideas. Rather, you are setting out the idea of 'usability' you have put together from reading that chapter. Do NOT overly rely on quotes. And remember to use proper citation practices. If you are using text that is not your own, quote and cite it, including page numbers.
1. Response: Usability is a metric for measuring how intuitive a function or program is for its designated user base, while also incorporating the attributes of design and intended ease-of-use that includes possible improvement over time and through use of said function or program.
2. Then, think about what is missing from this conception, from a specifically educational perspective, and on that basis try and patch together a reasonably grounded and defensible conception of educational usability.
2. Response: What is missing from the previous conception of usability is how a mentor or educator impacts, alters, or enhances the level of usability for the intended participant. Educational usability is a metric for measuring how intuitive a function or program is for its designated user base that incorporates a level of coaching or teaching elements into the learning curve of the function or program itself. This includes guidance and learned parameters for its use and application, as well as feedback for improvement purposes over time.
3. Revisit Woolgar’s (challenging but rewarding!) account of “usability gone wrong,” which demonstrates several ways a usability study ended up configuring ‘users,’ thereby undermining the usefulness of usability. Identify and discuss 2 of Woolgar’s examples.
3. Response: One example of configuring users rather than usability that Woolgar discusses in this article on usability gone wrong highlights the event of one of the users having difficulty reading one of the diagrams of the Stratus Guide, and as a result one of the technical writes redrew the diagram(Woolgar, 1990, p. 76) . While this may have been useful for the one user in question, all it does in the long run is reconfigure each new user to the preferred style of one previous user. instead of viewing this as a design issue or offering a choice of different modes of viewing the diagram, the wholesale swapping of one version to the next is a perfect example of reconfiguring users rather than usability. A second example within Woolgar's paper can be seen when Woolgar discusses the mentality of future-facing design and how "there is no point in asking users what they wanted because they themselves [...] were unaware of likely future developments" (Woolgar, 1990, p. 74). instead of making the users aware of future development, or even bothering to have the users contribute via feedback or interaction to the future development that was to take place, the users were reconfigured to simply use what was given to them at the time and taking their responses in the view of what was unknown to them for what was to come in the future. Essentially, the users were being configured and judged on a scale of what was likely to come in the future, rather than with what they were interacting with at the time. "According to this perspective, configuring the user involves the determination of likely future requirements and actions of users" (Woolgar, 1990, p. 75), rather than configuring the usability to the user's current interaction and focusing on future development based on current feedback.
4. Finally, discuss the two excerpts quoted below that have been drawn from your readings for this unit, and discuss differences you see in these 2 positions on the uses of usability.
4. Response: The major difference between Woolgar’s quote and the quote from Issa & Isaias is the tense in which they appear to be focused. Issa & Isaias appear to be more concerned with evaluation of usability prior to interaction with intended users, in an effort to generate a more seamless and positive interactive relationship between system and user, whereas Woolgar appears to believe that design and production are one of many steps that eventually end with the users themselves configuring and being configured by a new entity, in a process that doesn't so much terminate as permeate into the future of the user’s likely actions. Issa & Isaias focus on the pre-user integration process, and Woolgar focuses instead on the post-integration process, choosing instead to view the integration and identity and constraints of how the system interacts with its users as the final evaluation stage undertaken by the users themselves.
Information on the two articles discussed in this post can be found below:
Issa, T., & Isaias, P. (2015) Usability and human computer interaction (HCI).Links to an external site. In Sustainable Design (pp. 19-35). Springer.
Woolgar, S. (1990). Configuring the user: The case of usability trialsLinks to an external site.. The Sociological Review, 38(1, Suppl.), S58-S99.
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