Department of Family Medicine, Univeristy of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA.
Teach Learn Med. 2013;25(1):89-96. doi: 10.1080/10401334.2012.741547.
Usability evaluation provides developers and educators with the means to understand user needs, improve overall product utility, and increase user satisfaction. The application of "discount usability" principles developed to make usability testing more practical and useful may improve user experience at minimal cost and require little existing expertise to conduct. We describe an application of discount usability to a high-fidelity online communications assessment application developed by the University of Washington for the American Board of Internal Medicine.
Eight internal medicine physicians completed a discount usability test. Sessions were recorded and the videos analyzed for significant usability concerns. Concerns were identified, summarized, discussed, and prioritized by the authors in collaboration with the software developers before implementing any changes to the interface.
Thirty-eight significant usability issues were detected and four technical problems were identified. Each issue was responded to through modification of the software, by providing additional instruction, or delayed for a later version to be developed.
Discount usability can be easily implemented in academic developmental activities. Our study resulted in the discovery and remediation of significant user problems, in addition to giving important insight into the novel methods built into the application.
可用性评估为开发人员和教育工作者提供了了解用户需求、提高整体产品实用性和增加用户满意度的手段。应用“折扣可用性”原则可以以最小的成本提高用户体验，并在进行测试时几乎不需要现有专业知识。我们描述了一种折扣可用性在华盛顿大学为美国内科委员会开发的高保真在线通信评估应用程序中的应用。
八位内科医生完成了折扣可用性测试。会话被记录下来，视频被分析以确定显著的可用性问题。作者与软件开发商合作，在对界面进行任何更改之前，对问题进行了识别、总结、讨论和优先级排序。
发现了 38 个显著的可用性问题，并确定了 4 个技术问题。每个问题都通过修改软件、提供额外的指导或推迟到以后的版本来解决。
折扣可用性可以很容易地应用于学术开发活动中。我们的研究不仅发现并解决了用户的重大问题，还深入了解了应用程序中内置的新方法。
