Abstract
Usability evaluation recording technology provides the usability practitioner with the capability to record audio, video of the user, and desktop screen activity in a “picture-in-picture” (PIP) format, allowing the evaluator to observe the interface screen and the human user simultaneously. This study is the second in a series of studies to examine how best to present usability evaluation video so that evaluators reliably find usability problems. The research objective of this study focused on the opacity of the PIP video that is often displayed along with the desktop screen capture. A total of 16 undergraduate evaluators were used, with 8 having no experience and 8 having 20 hours of experience from an advanced human-computer interaction course. In addition, 6 usability practitioners were used to compare to undergraduate experiences. Eye tracking was used to determine the attentional focus of evaluators. Results showed that opacity levels of the PIP video did not influence the number of usability problems found for all three groups. All evaluators did focus more on the higher opacity PIP video, but this did not appear to influence their evaluation.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.