Abstract
The goal of this chapter is to present a design space for tools and methods supporting remote usability evaluation of interactive applications. This type of approach is acquiring increasing importance because it allows usability evaluation even when users are in their daily environments. Several techniques have been developed in this area for addressing various types of applications that can be used in different contexts. We discuss them within a unifying framework that can be used to compare the weaknesses and strengths of the various approaches and identify areas that require further research work to exploit all the possibilities opened up by remote evaluation.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Avouris N., Komis V., Margaritis M., & Fiotakis G., (2004), An environment for studying collaborative learning activities, Journal of Educational Technology & Society, Special Issue on Technology – Enhanced Learning, 7 (2), 34–41.
Cacioppo, J.T., Berntson, G.G., Larsen, J.T., Poehlmann, K.M., & Ito, T.A. (2000). The psychophysiology of emotion. In M. Lewis & R.J.M. Haviland-Jones (Eds.), The Handbook of Emotions (2nd Ed.) (pp. 173–191). New York: Guilford Press.
Card, S., Pirolli, P., Van der Wege, M., Morrison, J., Reeder, R., Schraedley, P., & Boshart, J. (2001). Information scent as a driver of Web behavior graphs: Results of a protocol analysis method for Web usability, Proceedings ACM CHI 2001 (pp. 498–504).
Choo, C. W., Detlor, B., & Turnbull, D. (1998). A behavioral model of information seeking on the Web—preliminary results of a study of how managers and IT specialists use the Web. In Proceedings of the 61st ASIS Annual Meeting, 35, (pp. 290–302).
ClickFox (2002), ClickFox Inc., http://www.clickfox.com.
Davison, B. (1999). Web traffic logs: An imperfect resource for evaluation. In: Proceedings of Ninth Annual Conference of the Internet Society (INET’99), San Jose, CA, June 1999.
Denis, C., & Karsenty, L. (2003). Inter-usability of multi-device systems: A conceptual framework. In A. Seffah & H. Javahery (Eds.), Multiple User Interfaces: Engineering and Application Framework (pp. 375–385). New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons.
Etgen, M., & Cantor, J. (1999). What does getting WET (Web Event-Logging Tool) mean for Web usability? In Proceedings of the Fifth Conference on Human Factors and the Web. Gaithersburg, MD, June.
Hartson, R. H., Castillo, J. C., Kelso, J. T., & Neale W. C. (1996). Remote evaluation: The network as an extension of the usability laboratory. In: Proceedings of CHI 1996 (pp. 228–235).
Ho, S.Y. (2005). An exploratory study of using a user remote tracker to examine Web users’ personality traits. In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Electronic commerce, ICEC’05 (pp. 659–665), August 15–17, 2005, Xi’an, China. ACM Press.
Hong, J.I., & Landay, J.A. (2001). WebQuilt: a framework for capturing and visualizing the Web experience. In Proceedings of WWW 2001 Conference (pp. 717–724).
IQ Services (2006). IQ Services: Interactive Quality Services, Inc. Access at: http://www.iq-services.com/
Ivory M. Y., & Hearst M. A., (2001) The state of the art in automating usability evaluation of user interfaces. ACM Computing Surveys, 33(4), 470–516.
Lecerof, A., & Paternó, F. (1998), Automatic support for usability evaluation. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 24 (10), 863–888.
Lister M. (2003). Streaming format software for usability testing. In Proceedings ACM CHI 2003, Extended Abstracts (pp. 632–633).
Paganelli, L., & Paternó F. (2003). Tools for remote usability evaluation of Web applications through browser logs and task models. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, and Computers, 35 (3), 369–378.
Paternò, F., & Ballardin, G. (2000). RemUSINE: a bridge between empirical and model-based evaluation when evaluators and users are distant. Interacting with Computers, 13(2), 229–251.
Paternò, F., Piruzza, A., & Santoro, C. (2006). Remote Web usability evaluation exploiting multi-modal information on user behavior. In Proceedings CADUI 2006, Bucharest. Springer-Verlag.
Petrie, H., Hamilton, F., King, N., & Pavan, P. (2006). Remote usability evaluations with disabled people. In Proceedings of CHI 2006 (pp. 1131–1141), Montréal, Québec, Canada, April 22–27, 2006.
Scholtz, J., Laskowski, S., & Downey L. (1998) Developing usability tools and techniques for designing and testing Websites. In Proceedings HFWeb’98 (Basking Ridge, NJ, June 1998). Access at: http://www.research.att.com/conf/hfWeb/proceedings/scholtz/index.html
Stoica, A., Fiotakis, G., Simarro-Cabrera, J., Frutos, H.M., Avouris, N., & Dimitriadis, Y. (2005). Usability evaluation of handheld devices: A case study for a museum application. In Proceedings of PCI 2005, Volos, November 2005.
Tauscher, L.M. (1999). Evaluating history mechanisms: An empirical study of reuse patterns in WWW navigation. MS Thesis, Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Tennent, P., Chalmers, M., & Morrison, A. (2006). Replayer: Collaborative evaluation of mobile applications. Presented in CHI’06 Workshop on Information Visualization and Interaction Techniques for Collaboration across Multiple Displays, Montreal, Canada.
Tullis, T, Fleischman, S., McNulty, M, Cianchette, C., & Bergel, M. (2002). An empirical comparison of lab and remote usability testing of websites. In: Proceedings of Usability Professionals Conference, Pennsylvania, 2002.
Waterson, S., Landay, J.A., & Matthews, T. (2002). In the lab and out in the wild: Remote Web usability testing for mobile devices. In: Proceedings of CHI 2002 (pp. 796–797), April 20–25, Minneapolis, USA.
West, R., & Lehman, K.R. (2006). Automated summative usability studies: An empirical evaluation. In Proceedings of CHI 2006(pp. 631–639), April 22–27, 2006, Montréal, Québec, Canada, ACM Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2008 Springer-Verlag London Limited
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Paternò, F., Santoro, C. (2008). Remote Usability Evaluation: Discussion of a General Framework and Experiences from Research with a Specific Tool. In: Law, E.LC., Hvannberg, E.T., Cockton, G. (eds) Maturing Usability. Human-Computer Interaction Series. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84628-941-5_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84628-941-5_9
Publisher Name: Springer, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-84628-940-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-84628-941-5
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)