Journal of Technical Writing and Communication Oct 1991

A Do-it-Yourself Usability Kit

R. Allen Harris University of Alberta

Abstract

Usability testing is now recognized as essential to quality documentation, but, unfortunately, the costs and the time required for fullblown testing are prohibitive for many projects. This article presents a set of very practical guidelines for a small documentation team to design and conduct its own usability study—including discussions of preparing task lists, recruiting participants, conducting the study, and analyzing the data.

Journal
Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
Published
1991-10-01
DOI
10.2190/k0wy-mgr7-1pw9-dydy
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Open Access
Closed
Topics
technical communication
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Citation Context

Cited by in this index (2)

  1. Clegg (1995)
    What if You Cannot Test All Documents for Usability?
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  2. Connor (1994)
    Research on Technical and Scientific Communication in Canada: A Bibliographical…
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication

References (10) · 2 in this index

  1. Atkinson J. M. (1990)
    STC Intercom
  2. Nielsen J., Usability Engineering at a Discount, Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Human-C…
  3. Yee P. and Harris R. A., The Pragmatics of Usability, Technicom '89 Proceedings, pp. 155–160, 1989.
  4. Ramey J., Usability Testing: Conducting the Test Procedure Itself, Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Prof…
  5. Bergfield Mills C. Usability Testing in the Real World, CHI'86 Proceedings, 1986.
     ↗
Show all 10 →
  1. Bergfield Mills C. and Bye K. L., Usability Testing: Users Reviews, Technical Communication, pp. 40–44, 1985.
  2. 10.1016/0378-7206(87)90062-0
     ↗
  3. Harris R. A. (1991)
    Technical Communication
  4. Harris (1990)
    Linguistic guidelines for graphic interfaces
    IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication
  5. Harris (1988)
    Linguistics, Technical Writing, and Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
CrossRef global citation count: 2 View in citation network → Build reading path →

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