微軟可用性工程介紹
翻譯：dozing_runner@msn.com
校對：大智 dazhi312@hotmail.com
The Participant side
參與者那邊
The Participant side of the lab is designed to simulate a normaloffice environment. We can easily change the layout of theparticipant‘s side to fit a variety of study scenarios.
實驗室的參與者那邊設(shè)計成模擬正常的辦公室環(huán)境． 我們能很容易的改變參與者那邊的布局來適應各種不同的研究場景。
There are two cameras that can be positioned at virtually any angleby the engineer on the Observer side. Cameras are used to record theparticipant‘s facial expressions and mouse movements while evaluatingsoftware.
在觀察者那邊，有兩臺攝像機，工程師把它安放在任意的垂直角度。在評估軟件的過程中，記錄參與者的面部表情和鼠標的移動．
The participant and the observer can communicate easily using microphones and speakers within the rooms.
在房間里，參與者和觀察者可以通過麥客鳳和揚聲器輕松地交談．
For studies using software, a scan converter provides a direct feedfrom the subject‘s computer screen to tape recorders and monitors onthe observer side. The scan converter allows us to record a much higherquality image than what we would get from pointing a camera at thesubject‘s monitor. We also have the ability to put a free-standingcamera in the lab if an additional camera angle is needed for thestudy.
對于研究使用軟件，掃描變換器把項目電腦的屏幕直接輸入到攝錄存儲器和觀察者這邊的監(jiān)視器上。掃描變換器使我們能記錄的圖像質(zhì)量比從安放在顯示器前的攝像機高很多。在研究中，如果需要更多的攝像角度，我們能夠在實驗室安排活動位置的攝像機。
The engineer can control the camera orientation and zoom from theobserver side. This flexibility is especially useful when we are doinga paper prototype or documentation test where the participant typicallymoves around a lot.
工程師能在觀察者那邊能控制攝像機的方位和鏡頭縮放。這種彈性處理特別有用，當我們在做一個紙上原型或者文檔測試，參與者的位置通常會移動得比較多。
With all those video inputs, we have to have some way to switch backand forth among them. That black box located under the monitor with allthe sliders and buttons is a video mixer.
對于所有的視頻輸入，我們有一些辦法在它們之中前進或后退定位。一個黑盒子安放在監(jiān)視器下面，有多有的滑塊和按鈕的是視頻混合控制臺。
The mixer allows us to quickly switch among the video sources, andto put multiple sources of video on the screen at once. Normally, themain source is an image of what the participant sees on his or her computer. A reduced image of the participant‘s face and mouse movementsusually appear as a small picture within that main picture. We can movethis small picture around on the screen if it gets in the way of animportant action on the screen.
混頻器允許我們在視頻資源中快速切換，把多路資源同時顯示在屏幕上。正常情況，主要資源是參與者看到的他（她）的電腦上的圖像。參與者表情和鼠標移動通常以小圖顯示在主畫面上。當小圖屏幕防礙了屏幕上的重要行為，我們能夠在屏幕上移動它。
The engineer can communicate with the participant via the microphoneon the desk, which is activated by a button on the microphone‘s base.The participant can only hear what is said on the observer side whenthe engineer activates the microphone. This reduces the likelihood thatparticipants will be distracted from discussions by the engineersduring the test.
工程師能通過按下桌面上的麥克風底座的按鈕和參與者交流，當工程師激活麥克風時，參與者才能聽到觀察者那邊說的什么。這樣減少了在測試中，參與者被工程師的討論分散注意的可能性。
A large monitor (not seen in photo above) provides a better view ofthe study for the observers. The picture is large enough for observersin the hall to see the action.
大顯示器給觀察者提供了更好的圖像以利于研究，足夠大的畫面利于觀察者看到操作過程。
As part of our Nationwide Site Visit Program, our product design anddevelopment teams go out into the field to observe users in their ownwork or home settings throughout the United States.
作為我們的全國性訪問計劃的一部分，我們的產(chǎn)品設(shè)計師和研發(fā)團隊深入到用戶自己的辦公場所或者家里觀察用戶，這個計劃在全美范圍展開。
By meeting with people in their own unique environments, we arebetter able to understand the "real life" needs, expectations andcircumstances behind today‘s dynamic software users.
通過接觸在特殊環(huán)境的人，我們可以更能夠了解當前變化中的軟件用戶的真實生活需要、期望和實際境況。
We’re interested in meeting with a mix of people who work with alltypes of products and who have varying levels of computer experience. In fact, you don‘t even need to be using Microsoft products to beeligible to participate.
我們有興趣接觸那些使用過不同軟件而且具有不同程度的計算機經(jīng)驗的人。事實上，并不一定需要使用過微軟的產(chǎn)品才是你成為參與者的條件。
The visits themselves are designed to be as non-disruptive in natureas possible. They typically last one to two hours in your own officeor home. We watch, we listen, and we learn while you work.
訪問者盡可能的不使自然的情況受到破壞，他們一般會在你的辦公室或家里呆上一到兩個小時，當你工作時，我們觀察，了解。
As a thank you for involvement in our program, each person whoparticipates in one of our Usability Site Visits receives his or herchoice of a software gift from our Usability Gratuity List.
Don’t miss this exciting opportunity to have a direct line of feedbackto the product design and development teams at Microsoft. Click hereto enroll!
作為你參與我們計劃的感謝，每個人只要參與到我們可用性活動站，都會從我們的可用性禮物列表中選擇一個軟件（作為）禮物。不要錯過這個激動人心的機會，去給微軟的產(chǎn)品設(shè)計和研發(fā)團隊提供直接的反饋信息。點擊這里注冊。
關(guān)于在微軟的Usabilty職位的介紹：
Usability is About People 可用性因人而來
Usability is where the vision of our product development teams meets the real-world demands of our customers.
可用性存在于我們的產(chǎn)品研發(fā)團隊符合我們的用戶真實需求的程度。
When you consider that Microsoft‘s mission is to enable people to dotheir best, the importance of usability is clear. This work is as muchabout people as it is about technology. Fostering usability draws onexpertise from varied fields, including anthropology, cognitivepsychology, computer science, and educational psychology.
當你認識到微軟的使命是讓人們做得更好，可用性的重要性就顯而易見了。這個工作涉及人和涉及技術(shù)是同樣多的，推進可用性吸納了來自各個領(lǐng)域的專家，包括人類學、認知心理學、計算機科學、教育心理學。
Microsoft maintains state-of-the-art facilities (more than 30participant/observation rooms and five analysis labs) devoted toexploring how customers can better interact with our products.
微軟維持了一個藝術(shù)級的機構(gòu)（超過30為參與者或觀察者房間和5個分析實驗室）致力于探索用戶如何更好的與我們的產(chǎn)品交互。
A few job titles found here:
Usability Engineer可以性工程師
Designs and conducts software and hardware usability studies; gathers, analyzes, interprets, and reports findings.
Usability Manager可用性經(jīng)理
Directs usability engineers tasked with planning and conductingusability studies, and works with team to identify and implementappropriate data-gathering and analysis techniques.
Software Test Manager軟件測試經(jīng)理
Oversees product testing within a product unit, designs master testplans and schedules, and manages test organization via test leads.
Software Design Engineer in Test 負責測試的軟件設(shè)計工程師
Tests and critiques software components and interfaces in moretechnical depth, writes test programs to assure quality, and developstest tools to increase effectiveness.
Software Test Architect 軟件測試架構(gòu)師
Identifies test design and implementation improvements, runs pilotprojects to measure their impact, and drives adoption across variousMicrosoft product development teams
Below is a listing of published papers and presentations from Microsoft‘s Usability Engineers.
以下是一個已出版的論文清單和微軟可用性工程師的推薦。
Usability Engineering
Articles: 文章
(2000) MSN Explorer: A Study in Usability In MSN, Microsoft PressPass, August 2000 Copyright © 2000 by Microsoft Corporation
Fulton, B (2002). Beyond Psychological Theory: Getting Data thatImprove Games. Game Developer‘s Conference 2002 Proceedings, San JoseCA, March 2002. Reprinted on the front page of Gamasutra.com on3.21.02, viewable at http://www.gamasutra.com/gdc2002/features/fulton/fulton_01.htm
Medlock, M. C., Wixon D., Terrano, M., Romero R., Fulton B. (2002). "Using the RITE Method to improve products: a definition and a casestudy." Usability Professionals Association, Orlando FL July 2002
Pagulayan, R. J., Keeker, K., Wixon, D., Romero, R., & Fuller, T.(2003). User-centered design in games. In J. Jacko and A. Sears(Eds.), Handbook for Human-Computer Interaction in Interactive Systems(pp. 883-906). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Pagulayan, R. J., Steury, K. R., Fulton, B., & Romero, R. L. (inpress). Designing for fun: User-testing case studies. In M. Blythe, K.Overbeeke, A. Monk, and P. Wright, (Eds.), Funology: From Usability toEnjoyment. Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Methods & Techniques:方法和技術(shù)
Benedek, J., Miner, T. (2002). Measuring Desirability: New methods forevaluating desirability in a usability lab setting. In Proceedings ofUsability Professionals Association 2002, Orlando, July 8-12.
Benedek, J., Miner, T. (2002). Product Reaction Cards. Appendix topublished paper “Measuring Desirability” in Proceedings of UsabilityProfessionals Association 2002, Orlando, July 8-12.
Caulton, D. (1999). Relaxing the Homogeneity Assumption in DiscountUsability. Submitted to Behavior and Information Technology.
Czerwinski, M. (1999). Research methods for next generation HCI. InProceedings of Human-Computer Interaction International 1999, Munich,August 21-27.
Denning, S., Hoiem, D., Simpson, M., & Sullivan, K. (1990). TheValue of Thinking-Aloud Protocols in Industry: A Case Study atMicrosoft Corporation. In Proceedings of the Human Factors Society 34thAnnual Meeting, 1285-1289.
Gilman, E. & Butler, S. (1999). Object Oriented GUI Design: APractical Application of "The Bridge" Methodology. Proceedings ofUsability Professionals Association 99 (Scottsdale AZ, June 29-July 2):199-208.
Graf, R. (1996). Exploring the design of a sales automation workstationusing field research. In D. Wixon and J. Ramey (Eds.), Field MethodsCasebook for Software Design, John Wiley & Sons.
Graf, R. (1998). Participatory Design: A case study in designingsoftware for the home. A workshop presentation at the fifth biennialParticipatory Design Conference, Seattle, WA, November 12-14, 1998.
Hanna, L., Risden, K., Czerwinski, M., & Alexander, K. (1999). Therole of usability research in designing children’s computer products.In A. Druin (Ed.), The Design of Children’s Technology (pp. 3-26). SanFrancisco, CA: Morgan Kaufman.
Kanerva, A., Keeker, K., Risden, K., Schuh, E. & Czerwinski, M.(1997). Web Usability Research at Microsoft Corporation. In J. Ratner,E. Grosse and C. Forsythe (eds.) Human Factors for World Wide WebDevelopment, Lawrence Erlbaum, New York.
Muller, M. & Czerwinski, M. (1999). Organizing usability work tofit the full product range. In Association for Computing Machinery’s(ACM) Communications of the ACM, May, 42 (5), pp.87-90. Copyright ©1999 by ACM, Inc.
Nodder, C., Williams, G., & Dubrow, D. (1999). Evaluating theusability of an evolving collaborative product --changes in user type,tasks and evaluation methods over time. In proceedings of theinternational ACM SIGGROUP conference on supporting group work(GROUP99) p150-159
Risden, K. (1999). Toward usable browse hierarchies for the Web. InBullinger, H. and Ziegler, J. (Eds.) Human Computer Interaction:Ergonomics and User Interfaces, 1, 1098-1102.
Spencer, R. (2000). The streamlined cognitive walkthrough method,working around social constraints encountered in a software developmentcompany. In Proceedings of the CHI 2000 conference on Human Factors incomputing systems, Pages 353 - 359.
Guidelines:指南
Hanna, L., Risden, K., & Alexander, K. (1997, September + October).Guidelines for usability testing with children. interactions, 4(5),9-14. Copyright © 1997 by ACM, Inc.
Keeker, K. (1997, July 24). Improving Web Site Usability andAppeal. Microsoft Developer Network Web Workshop (online ed.). Copyright © 1997 by Microsoft Corporation.
Tools:工具
Hoiem, D. & Sullivan, K. (1994). Designing and Using IntegratedData Collection and Analysis Tools: Challenges and Considerations.Behaviour and Information Technology, 13, 160-170.
Sullivan, K. (1993, July). Dealing with Limited Data Analysis Time andLimited Availability of Usability Specialists. In K. Sullivan (Chair),Usability Lab Tools: How Organizational Constraints Shape TheirDevelopment (session 11). Panel conducted at the UsabilityProfessionals Association Conference, Redmond, WA.
Human-Computer Interaction 人機交互
Benedek, J. (2002). MSN.com Redesigned: Usability and organizationaltradeoffs in the redesign of a popular portal. In Proceedings ofUsability Professionals Association 2002, Orlando, July 8-12.
Caulton, D. and Dye, K. (1997). Do Users Always Benefit When UserInterfaces Are Consistent? In Thimbleby, H., O’Conaill, B. and Thomas,P. (Eds) People and Computers XII - Proceedings of HCI ‘97, Springer,New York.
Chen, C. & Czerwinski, M. (1997). Spatial ability and visualnavigation: An empirical study. In The New Review for Hypertext andMultimedia, Volume 3, pp. 40-66.
Chen, C. & Czerwinski, M. (1998). From latent semantics to spatialhypertext--An Integrated Approach. In Hypertext ‘98, The Proceedings ofthe 9th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia, pp. 77-86.Copyright © 1998 by ACM, Inc.
Chen, C., Czerwinksi, M. & Macredie, R. (1998). Human factors in virtual environments. In Virtual Reality, 3, pp. 223-225.
Czerwinski, M. & Larson, K. (1998). Trends in future Web designs:what‘s next for the HCI professional? In ACM Interactions, Volume 5:6,November-December 1998, pp. 9-14. Copyright © 1998 by ACM, Inc.
Czerwinski, M. (1999). Trends in future web designs. In Proceedings ofHuman-Computer Interaction International 1999, Munich, August 21-27.
Czerwinski, M., Dumais, S., Robertson, G., Dziadosz, S., Tiernan, S.and van Dantzich, M. (1999). Visualizing implicit queries forinformation management and retrieval. In Proceedings of CHI ’99, HumanFactors in Computing Systems, (Pittsburgh, May 17-20, 1999), ACM press,560-567. Copyright © 1999 by ACM, Inc.
Czerwinski, M., van Dantzich, M., Robertson, G.G. & Hoffman, H.(1999). The contribution of thumbnail image, mouse-over text andspatial location memory to web page retrieval in 3D. In Proceedings ofInteract ‘99, Edinburgh, Scotland, Sept. 1-4.
Dziadosz, S. and Chandrasekar, R. (2002) Do Thumbnail Previews HelpUsers Make Better Relevance Decisions about Web Search Results? InProceedings of SIGIR 2002, Conference on Research and Development inInformation Retrieval (Tempere, Finland, August 11-15, 2002), ACMPress, 365-366.
Graf, R. C. (1993). A Three Level Connectionist Model for ContextualInterference Effects in Open Loop Motor Skills. Doctoral dissertation,The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.
Johnson, P., McLoone, H., Adams, E., and Arms, S. (2000). DevelopingMiniature Force-Sensing Technologies for Measuring the forces Appliedto a Computer Mouse. In Proceedings of the XIVth Triennial Congress ofthe IEA and the 44th Annual Meeting of the HFES, (San Diego, July29-August 2, 2000), Vol. 6, pp629-632.
Konrad, C. & Angevine, P. (2000). Cooperative Design of MicrosoftOffice. In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on HumanInteraction with Complex Systems, Urbana, IL, April 30 - May 2, 2000.
Larson, K. & Czerwinski, M. (1998). Web page design: Implicationsof memory, structure and scent for information retrieval. InProceedings of CHI ’98, Human Factors in Computing Systems (LA, April21-23, 1998), ACM press, 25-32. Copyright © 1998 by ACM, Inc.
Lee, W.O. (1998) Analysis of User Testing using an ApproximateModel of User Action. In Proceedings of Human-Computer Interaction ‘98,Johnson, H., Nigay, L., Roast, C. (Eds.)
McLoone, H., Jacobson, M., Adams, E., and Johnson, P. (2000). InfraredThermography to Qualify and Quantify Interaction Between Hand andComputer Mouse and Its Relationship to Comfort. In Proceedings of theXIVth Triennial Congress of the IEA and the 44th Annual Meeting of theHFES, (San Diego, July 29–August 2, 2000), Vol. 6, pp47-50.
Robertson, G., Czerwinski, M., Larson, K. & van Dantzich, M.(1997). Immersion in Desktop Virtual Reality. In Proceedings of UIST‘97, 10th Annual Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology,pp. 11-19. Copyright © 1997 by ACM, Inc.
Robertson, G. , Czerwinski, M., Larson, K., Robbins, D., Thiel, D.& van Dantzich, M. (1998). Data Mountain: Using spatial memory fordocument management. In Proceedings of UIST ‘98, 11th Annual Symposiumon User Interface Software and Technology, pp. 153-162. Copyright ©1998 by ACM, Inc.
Shafer, S., Krumm, J., Brumitt, B., Meyers, B., Czerwinski, M., &Robbins, D. (1998). The New EasyLiving Project at Microsoft Research.Joint DARPA/NIST Smart Spaces Workshop, July 30-31, 1998, Gaithersburg,Maryland.
Shea, J. & Graf, R. (1991, October 10-11). A Model for ContextualInterference Effects in Motor Learning. Paper presented at theinvitational conference, Cognitive Assessment: InterdisciplinaryDialog, sponsored by the College of Education, Texas A&MUniversity, College Station, TX.
Shea, J. & Graf, R. (1992). A model for contextual interferenceeffects in motor learning. In C. R. Reynolds (Ed.), CognitiveAssessment: A Multidisciplinary Perspective, New York: Plenum Press.
Sullivan, K. (1991). Using Task Analysis in Documentation FieldResearch. In ACM Ninth International Conference on SystemsDocumentation, 149-153. Copyright © 1991 by ACM, Inc.
Sullivan, K. (1996). The Windows 95 User Interface: A Case Study inUsability Engineering. In Proceedings of ACM CHI 96 Conference on HumanFactors in Computing Systems, 473-480. Copyright © 1996 by ACM, Inc.
Sullivan, K. (1997). The Windows 95 user interface: Iterative designand problem tracking in action. Proceedings of the 1997 InternationalConference on Software Engineering, 562-563. Copyright © 1997 by ACM,Inc.
Wixon, D. (1995). The Sales Automation Workstation: A Case Study OfField Oriented Design. A paper presented at the workshop, FieldOriented Design Techniques: Case Studies and Organizing Dimensions. CHI‘95, Denver, CO. Copyright © 1995 by ACM, Inc.
