Week 6 Assignment: Usability Assessment

The purpose of this assignment is to recognize the role of usability considerations in the design, use, and acceptance of technology; identify features that impact usability; and compare the merits of different usability-assessment methods. Due Date: Submit to the Dropbox basket by Sunday 11:59 p.m. MT at the end of Week 6. Students are given the opportunity to request an extension on assignments for emergent situations. Supporting documentation must be submitted to the assigned faculty. If the student’s request is not approved, the assignment is graded and a late penalty is applied as follows: Requirements Select a software application, preferably an information system that you currently use in your work setting, to assess usability. You may personally test the application or solicit the participation of another party. You have the option to do one of the following:

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Address a list of questions that you create or adopt from a source that you will identify. Ask another party, via guided discussion, to assess the usability of the specified function/information system. Observe a user completing the identified function, noting the length of time required for completion, any obstacles, and at the conclusion of the task, ask for an impression on usability/issues. If you do not currently have access to an automated system, then speak with your instructor to determine a mutually agreeable alternative. You may wish to use the following reference to formulate your list of questions/observations: Lowry, S. Z., Ramaiah, M., Taylor, S., Patterson, E. S., Prettyman, S.S., Simmons, D., Brick, D., Latkany, P., & Q Gibbons, M. C. (2015). Technical evaluation, testing and validation of the usability of electronic health record: empirically based use cases for validating safety-enhanced usability and guidelines for standardization. Retrieved from https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ir/2015/NIST.IR.7804-1.pdfLinks to an external site.

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.