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Janet L. Fath

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Publications by Janet L. Fath (bibliography)

1994

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Fath, Janet L., Mann, Teresa L. and Holzman, Thomas C. (1994): A Practical Guide to Using Software Usability Labs: Lessons Learned at IBM. In Behaviour and Information Technology, 13 (1) pp. 94-105.

“Usability evaluation is a key component of a user-centred design process. Access to a usability laboratory can greatly facilitate the process of empirically measuring user performance, but the mere presence of a usability laboratory does not assure usable products. Rather, the laboratory must be used within an evaluation process. The process described in this article has five phases: designing the evaluation, preparing to conduct the evaluation, conducting the evaluation, analyzing the data, and reporting the results Lessons learned by the authors while they practised this evaluation process with a variety of products are summarized for possible use by other usability organizations.”

1992

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Fath, Janet L. and Bias, Randolph G. (1992): Taking the "Task" Out of Task Analysis. In: Proceedings of the Human Factors Society 36th Annual Meeting 1992. pp. 379-383.

“Task analysis is a well-accepted component of user-centered design. It is often left out of the design process, however, due to a lack of practical methods, the difficulty in predicting the amount of resource required to perform it, and a short supply of people with the appropriate skills. A solution to these problems is a structured set of activities that compose a task analysis and relate to the overall design process. The general framework into which these activities fit has three phases: Data Collection, Data Analysis, and Design. During the Data Collection phase, user and task data are collected and validated. The Data Analysis phase requires analyzing the user and task data in a way that results in suggestions for information representation, navigation, terminology, and consistency. Finally, the Design phase requires translating the suggestions from the Data Analysis phase into a viable product. A prototype task analysis workbook was developed to assess the feasibility of the structured approach to task analysis. The workbook includes tools for data collection, data analysis, and design, as well as instructions for how to use the tools. Over a period of two years, the workbook was used in five different development projects. A representative from each group was interviewed to determine how the workbook was used and which parts were most useful. Results of the interviews indicate that the workbook approach has merit.”

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