Guidelines for Describing Usability Problems

I’ve been reading a lot recently about Usability Knowledge Management and usability problem classification in particular. I’ve read papers about the usability problem taxonomy (Keenan), the user action framework (Andre), classification of usability problems (Vilbergsdottir), Pattern Language (Hughes) and more.

After posting a message to the ACM newsletter i received a message from Davide Bolchini, Indiana University. Davide wrote a paper ‘Guidelines for Describing Usability Problems’ where he explains some recommendations on how to communicate usability findings and, in particular, on how to describe usability problems so that the reporting to the various stakeholders might be done in a more effective and efficient fashion.

Six guidelines for describing usability problems:

• Separation of concerns Decouple a usability problem into the various design dimensions it is concerned with (content, navigation, semiotics, graphics, …) and distinguishing between problems which are requirements-independent and problems depending on the requirements of the application (e.g. scenarios supported).
• Abstraction level Describe usability problems keeping a consistent level of granularity, moving from general to specific and without abruptly mixing details with strategic problems.
• Extendibility In case of complex applications, describe each problem as a representative of a class of problems, characterize each problem by providing a general statement pointing to specific examples.
• Authority Give reason of your findings by drawing to elements which can gain credibility, such as the experience of the analysts, the impact on the user experience and the compliance with the standard and convention.
• Prioritization Communicate your findings in order of importance: according to the circumstances, importance may mean gravity for the user experience or estimated effort needed to fix the problem.
• Technicality Adapt your concepts and wording to the target audience you are communicating with, in such a way that stakeholders should clearly understand the essence of the problems.

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