Usability Evaluation of a Tag-Based Interface
Rajinesh Ravendran, Ian MacColl, and Michael Docherty
Journal of Usability Studies, Volume 7, Issue 4, August 2012, pp. 143 - 160
Abstract
In this study, we report the findings of a comparative usability evaluation of a tag-based interface and the present conventional interface in the Australian banking context. The tag-based interface is based on user-assigned tags to banking resources with support for different types of customization, while the conventional interface is based on standard HTML objects such as dropdown boxes, lists, and tables, with limited customization. A total of 30 online banking users between the ages of 21 to 50 participated in the study. Each participant carried out a set of tasks on both interfaces and completed a post-test usability questionnaire. Additional feedback was sought from the participant through a post-evaluation debriefing session. Efficiency, effectiveness, and user satisfaction were considered to evaluate the usability of the interfaces. The results of the evaluation show that the tag-based interface improved usability over the conventional interface in terms of user satisfaction in both online and mobile contexts. This outcome is particularly apparent in the mobile context among inexperienced users. We conclude that there is a potential for the tag-based interface to improve user satisfaction of online and mobile banking, and also to positively affect the adoption and acceptance of mobile banking, particularly in Australia.
Practitioner’s Take Away
The following are tips for usability practitioners:
- Conduct a pilot study to debug the details of your test procedure.
- Use SUS for a quick and easy measure of perceived usability.
- Use task completion times and activity/observation logs to measure the actual usability (efficiency and effectiveness).
- Prior to evaluation, brief and familiarize the participants with the different interfaces via a demo and test activity.
- Prior to evaluation, go through the SUS questionnaire with each participant to ensure he/she thoroughly understands every question as the language used may be a little hard to understand especially for non-native English speakers.
- Conduct a debriefing session to reaffirm the answers provided by the participant for the SUS questionnaire and also to ascertain the usability problems that were observed during evaluation.
- Compare and contrast the summative experience ratings with the SUS scores to better understand the perceived usability of the interfaces evaluated.
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Usability Evaluation of a Tag-Based Interface