On the Advantages of a Systematic Inspection for Evaluating Hypermedia Usability

Abstract

It is indubitable that usability inspection of complex hypermedia is still an “art,” in the
\nsense that a great deal is left to the skills, experience, and ability of the inspectors.
\nTraining inspectors is difficult and often quite expensive. The Systematic Usability
\nEvaluation (SUE) inspection technique has been proposed to help usability inspectors
\nshare and transfer their evaluation know-how, to simplify the hypermedia inspection
\nprocess for newcomers, and to achieve more effective and efficient evaluation results.
\nSUE inspection is based on the use of evaluation patterns, called abstract tasks, which
\nprecisely describe the activities to be performed by evaluators during inspection. This
\narticle highlights the advantages of this inspection technique by presenting its empirical
\nvalidation through a controlled experiment. Two groups of novice inspectors were
\nasked to evaluate a commercial hypermedia CD-ROM by applying the SUE inspection
\nor traditional heuristic evaluation. The comparison was based on three major dimensions:
\neffectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction. Results indicate a clear advantage of
\nthe SUE inspection over the traditional inspection on all dimensions, demonstrating
\nthat abstract tasks are efficient tools to drive the evaluator’s performance.