Section: New Results

Extension of Usability Methods and Tools

User Evaluation and Tailoring of Personal Information

Participants : Claudia Detraux, Dominique Scapin.

In the context of the ANR project PIMI (Personal Information Management through Internet) an ergonomic evaluation was conducted on the initial prototype, in its PC version [49] and its mobile version [48] . In addition, an experiment was conducted on the usability of the new improved PIMI prototype. The goals were to evaluate its usability, and to assess user tailoring as an evaluation technique. Thirty users participated to the study: a first part consisted in a standard user test (SUT) and a second part was a usability test with tailoring (UTT). Overall, a total of 51 usability problems were diagnosed. Among those, 32 resulted from SUT, and 19 from UTT. Part of the latter (11) are additional to the ones identified during SUT, and to those diagnosed previously by usability inspection (UI with Ergonomic Criteria). The active involvement of users through customization scenarios appear to provide additional cues for usability assessment, and for design, with new generic usability recommendations [23] ,[22] .