Authors:
Ashok Sivaji, Søren Feodor Nielsen and Torkil Clemmensen
Abstract:
The usability movement has historically always sought to empower end-users of computers so that theyunderstand what is happening and can control the outcome. In this article, we develop and evaluate a “TextualFeedback” tool for usability and user experience (UX) evaluation that can be used to empower well-educatedbut low-status users in UX evaluations in countries and contexts with high power distances. The proposed toolcontributes to the Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) community’s pool of localized UX evaluation tools. Weevaluate the tool with 40 users from two socio-economic groups in real-life UX usability evaluations settings inMalaysia. The results indicate that the Textual Feedback tool may help participants to give their thoughts in UXevaluation in high power distance contexts. In particular, the Textual Feedback tool helps high status femalesand low status males express more UX problems than they can with traditional concurrent think aloud (CTA)alone. We found that classic concurrent think aloud UX evaluation works fine in high power contexts, but onlywith the addition of Textual Feedback to mitigate the effects of socio-economic status in certain user groups. We suggest that future research on UX evaluation look more into how to empower certain user groups, such aslow status female users, in UX evaluations done in high power distance contexts.
Source:
International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction 2017
