Lessons learned from research and complex empirical evaluation of human-computer interaction

Abstract

Consulta en la Biblioteca ETSI Industriales (9144)

[EN] In this study, I will try to overview the main ideas about usability evolution and methods nowadays. I was interested in developing something related to Human cultural differences, web design questions, role of the empirical evaluation in web design, the psychopysiological new evaluation methods or the new hardware and software tools used in Usability evaluation. So, in the end I wrote about a combination of all these subjects. I add a very simple example of a non-scientific research trying to find out any correlation between color preferences and language, gender, etc; In order to sketch in a scientific and not-scientific way the main techniques and opinions about design, methodologies and trends regarding Usability evaluation, I tried to overview the main subjective and objective basic researches and opinions using blogs, chats and non-scientific sources, as well as official studies, professional designers¿ advices and scientific research papers; in order to achieve a more or less complete point of view about the actual situation of Usability techniques nowadays. This is why I decided to make two main parts in the thesis: a subjective and an objective one, depending on the sources that I relied. To finish, I tried to draw the whole basic Usability picture and to point out its possibilities in future researches. It was somehow difficult for me to make the subjective part as it is such a technical subject and also due to the fact that I had never made a thesis before. This is the last part of my degree as an Industrial Engineer and I have had some logistic problems which didn¿t let me do this thesis as deep as I would have like to. Anyway I think the result is interesting, I learned so many things by writing it and, what is even more important: it made me feel very interested in Ergonomics, a completely unknown field for me until now. I had the opportunity of witnessing some actual Usability experiments and take a little part in them. I became and Erasmus last year (2010) and as any other student in my degree I finish my subjects feeling that I was not prepared yet for the market, this opportunity has given me a new point of view, by showing me that I learn fast and I am willing to become a good professional one day, hopefully in a field related to Usability or/and Ergonomics.