Concept Mapping Usability Evaluation: An Exploratory Study of a New Usability Inspection Method

Abstract

A key aspect of a website or any artifact is its usability—the ability of the artifact’s target audience to carry out tasks safely, effectively, efficiently, even joyfully. One class of usability evaluation methods is inspection methods, in which the usability professional systematically inspects the user interface to discern potential usability problems. Here the article proposes employing Concept Mapping, a proven method of knowledge elicitation and representation, as a new, structured usability inspection method. Nineteen students in a master’s-level usability class each generated a Concept Map (Cmap) of 1 of 5 websites. These Cmaps were shared with the sites’ webmasters, and the webmasters completed a questionnaire giving us feedback on the value of the Cmaps for subsequent site redesigns. The article presents those data, infers what improvements need to be made in the new Concept Mapping Usability Evaluation method, and invites others to join us in investigating the potential value of this method.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We gratefully acknowledge the efforts of the first author’s spring 2014 master’s-level Usability class in the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin. Also, the first author gratefully acknowledges Dr. Ken Ford, and the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, for welcoming him as a visiting researcher to carry out some of this research. We thank two anonymous reviewers and special issue editor James Lewis for comments that helped us improve our manuscript materially.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Randolph G. Bias

Randolph G. Bias is a professor in the School of Information at The University of Texas at Austin, and codirector of the Information eXperience Lab there. He spent 23 years as a usability professional and manager in industry, and he coedited, with Deborah Mayhew, two editions of Cost-Justifying Usability (1994, 2005).

Brian M. Moon

Brian M. Moon is Chief Technology Officer for Perigean Technologies LLC. He is widely recognized for his innovative applications of Concept Mapping, highlighted in Applied Concept Mapping: Capturing, Analyzing, and Organizing Knowledge. He is Adjunct Faculty in Kent State University’s Information Architecture and Knowledge Management, Online Master of Science program.

Robert R. Hoffman

Robert R. Hoffman is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, Fellow of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, and a Fulbright Scholar. He has been recognized internationally in psychology, remote sensing, human factors engineering, and artificial intelligence. Hoffman is a coeditor of IEEE: Intelligent Systems.