Hello all,

We continue our bi-weekly reading group this Friday, June 15st, at 2PM. We will be reading two papers by Jakob Nielsen: Heuristic evaluation of user interfaces (CHI 1990) and Enhancing the explanatory power of usability heuristics (CHI 1994).

These classic papers show how Nielsen studied best practices in heuristic evaluation, and used these results to develop his influential list of usability heuristics (https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/) which is now a standard tool in UX design and often applied in HCI research. (If you're worried, the second paper is quite short at 3.5 pages.)

PAPER 1: https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=97281

Heuristic evaluation of user interfaceshttps://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=97281 dl.acm.org Heuristic evaluation is an informal method of usability analysis where a number of evaluators are presented with an interface design and asked to comment on it.

PAPER 2: https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=191729

[https://dl.acm.org/images/apdf.jpg]https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=191729

Enhancing the explanatory power of usability heuristicshttps://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=191729 dl.acm.org Holcomb, R., and Tharp, A. L. An amalgamated model of software usability. In Knafl, G. (Ed.), Proceedings of the 13th IEEE COMPSAC international Conference, IEEE Computer Society, Washington, D.C., 1989. Holcomb, R., and Tharp, A. L. What users say about software usability. International Journal of ...

Christine will "champion" the paper this week by (re-)reading the papers thoroughly and leading the discussion, highlighting why she thinks the work is important.

The meeting will take place at Crimson Teas (415 Spadina Ave), which is a 5 min walk from Bahen.

Daniel has generously offered to fund drinks and snacks for the meeting. Crimson Teas has delicious tea and the owner (Philip) is very nice, so consider your perishing physical thirst in addition to your thirst for knowledge.

Best,

Jacob

--- Jacob Ritchie

M.Sc. Student, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto