Evaluation of Microsoft Office PowerPoint D E C I D E: A

framework to guide evaluation

Determine the overall goals of the evaluation

• What do you want to find out and why it is important?

The purpose of the evaluation is to check areas of usability that are successfully
comprehended by the user, and at the same time also discover those areas that are not
consistent or intuitive for the user, all in efforts to better the system.

• Ensure that the interface is self explanatory and easy to understand

• Investigate how easy/ difficulty and quick/slow it is create, view and save the
first two slides.
• To find out if users can fluidly navigate through the menus of the system

The evaluation is important to the success of the system, as it is imperative that users be
able to understand the options available to them and be able to produce documents
efficiently.

Explore the specific questions to be answered

• What are the "big" questions you want answered that provide actionable insights?

• Do users understand the icons and the labelling of the buttons?

• Is the interface user friendly?
• Do they enjoy interacting with the system?
• Functionally, do you feel comfortable navigating this system

Choose the evaluation approach and methods to answer questions

The evaluation approaches that would best suit my purposes would be a hybrid
evaluation methodology i.e. mixture of the usability testing and heuristic evaluation. Both
approaches have some good aspects to them. While the usability testing is central to the
evaluation, as we will have a predetermined path that the user will navigate. By doing this
we will see any unexpected detours that are performed by the user.

Identify the practical issues that must be addressed

A usability lab test, though it would not be in its real environment, could be used to
analyze the ways in which users navigate throughout the system. This test can provide an
in-depth look at the program. Lab equipment should be tested prior to the test and users
should be familiarise with the system beforehand if they have never used it.

Users: Must represent the target population, have to taken into consideration factors such
as age, expertise, sex, cultural differences. Another issue to consider is how many tasks
are the users going to perform. We have to select tasks that users will perform with the
final product. How much time do users get to perform these tasks? We have to make sure
the subjects are at ease and they be aware that it is the product that is being tested and
not them.
Decide how to deal with the ethical issues
• Are there any ethical issues that you may encounter? How will you address these?

Ethical issues, which we may encounter, would be dealing with confidentiality of

information we receive from the users. We will address this issue by presenting a consent
form for the use to sign – that guards their rights and our special privilege to their
information. Our duty after that is to make sure their personal information is not
compromised or released. Another issue, which we may encounter, would be dealing with
the actual testing. The participants will be told in advance that if any part of the testing is
not comfortable, they may choose to quit the testing.

Evaluate, analyze, interpret and present the data.

• Analysis and interpret the collected data to identify patterns or themes that emerge.

• Determine reliability of the results by looking at the consistency of the result.

• Examine the validity of the results by comparing it to our initial goals to make
sure that it answers our concern.
• Be sensitive to any possible biases, and establish the scope of the evaluation
study.
• Keep in account of the affects that may caused by the environment (especially if
we are not testing it in subway)
• List all the data in a requirement.
• Determine the practical changes that should be made according to the new
data.
• Prioritize those changes. +

Prepared by Chairty Mutti