微软可用性工程介绍_第二部分

微软可用性工程介绍
翻译：[e-mail]
校对：大智 [e-mail]

The Participant side
参与者那边

The Participant side of the lab is designed to simulate a normal office environment. We can easily change the layout of the participant‘s side to fit a variety of study scenarios.
实验室的参与者那边设计成模拟正常的办公室环境． 我们能很容易的改变参与者那边的布局来适应各种不同的研究场景。

There are two cameras that can be positioned at virtually any angle by the engineer on the Observer side. Cameras are used to record the participant‘s facial expressions and mouse movements while evaluating software.
在观察者那边，有两台摄像机，工程师把它安放在任意的垂直角度。在评估软件的过程中，记录参与者的面部表情和鼠标的移动．

The participant and the observer can communicate easily using microphones and speakers within the rooms.
在房间里，参与者和观察者可以通过麦客凤和扬声器轻松地交谈．

For studies using software, a scan converter provides a direct feed from the subject‘s computer screen to tape recorders and monitors on the observer side. The scan converter allows us to record a much higher quality image than what we would get from pointing a camera at the subject‘s monitor. We also have the ability to put a free-standing camera in the lab if an additional camera angle is needed for the study.
对于研究使用软件，扫描变换器把项目电脑的屏幕直接输入到摄录存储器和观察者这边的监视器上。扫描变换器使我们能记录的图像质量比从安放在显示器前的摄像机高很多。在研究中，如果需要更多的摄像角度，我们能够在实验室安排活动位置的摄像机。

The engineer can control the camera orientation and zoom from the observer side. This flexibility is especially useful when we are doing a paper prototype or documentation test where the participant typically moves around a lot.
工程师能在观察者那边能控制摄像机的方位和镜头缩放。这种弹性处理特别有用，当我们在做一个纸上原型或者文档测试，参与者的位置通常会移动得比较多。

With all those video inputs, we have to have some way to switch back and forth among them. That black box located under the monitor with all the sliders and buttons is a video mixer.
对于所有的视频输入，我们有一些办法在它们之中前进或后退定位。一个黑盒子安放在监视器下面，有多有的滑块和按钮的是视频混合控制台。

The mixer allows us to quickly switch among the video sources, and to put multiple sources of video on the screen at once. Normally, the main source is an image of what the participant sees on his or her   computer. A reduced image of the participant‘s face and mouse movements usually appear as a small picture within that main picture. We can move this small picture around on the screen if it gets in the way of an important action on the screen.
混频器允许我们在视频资源中快速切换，把多路资源同时显示在屏幕上。正常情况，主要资源是参与者看到的他（她）的电脑上的图像。参与者表情和鼠标移动通常以小图显示在主画面上。当小图屏幕防碍了屏幕上的重要行为，我们能够在屏幕上移动它。

The engineer can communicate with the participant via the microphone on 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 when the engineer activates the microphone. This reduces the likelihood that participants will be distracted from discussions by the engineers during the test.
工程师能通过按下桌面上的麦克风底座的按钮和参与者交流，当工程师激活麦克风时，参与者才能听到观察者那边说的什么。这样减少了在测试中，参与者被工程师的讨论分散注意的可能性。

A large monitor (not seen in photo above) provides a better view of the study for the observers. The picture is large enough for observers in the hall to see the action.
大显示器给观察者提供了更好的图像以利于研究，足够大的画面利于观察者看到操作过程。

As part of our Nationwide Site Visit Program, our product design and development teams go out into the field to observe users in their own work or home settings throughout the United States.
作为我们的全国性访问计划的一部分，我们的产品设计师和研发团队深入到用户自己的办公场所或者家里观察用户，这个计划在全美范围展开。

By meeting with people in their own unique environments, we are better able to understand the "real life" needs, expectations and circumstances behind today‘s dynamic software users.
通过接触在特殊环境的人，我们可以更能够了解当前变化中的软件用户的真实生活需要、期望和实际境况。

We’re interested in meeting with a mix of people who work with all types of products and who have varying levels of computer experience.   In fact, you don‘t even need to be using Microsoft products to be eligible to participate.
我们有兴趣接触那些使用过不同软件而且具有不同程度的计算机经验的人。事实上，并不一定需要使用过微软的产品才是你成为参与者的条件。

The visits themselves are designed to be as non-disruptive in nature as possible.   They typically last one to two hours in your own office or home.   We watch, we listen, and we learn while you work.
访问者尽可能的不使自然的情况受到破坏，他们一般会在你的办公室或家里呆上一到两个小时，当你工作时，我们观察，了解。

As a thank you for involvement in our program, each person who participates in one of our Usability Site Visits receives his or her choice of a software gift from our Usability Gratuity List.
Don’t miss this exciting opportunity to have a direct line of feedback to the product design and development teams at Microsoft.   Click here to enroll!
作为你参与我们计划的感谢，每个人只要参与到我们可用性活动站，都会从我们的可用性礼物列表中选择一个软件（作为）礼物。不要错过这个激动人心的机会，去给微软的产品设计和研发团队提供直接的反馈信息。点击这里注册。

关于在微软的Usabilty职位的介绍：

Usability is About People　可用性因人而来
Usability is where the vision of our product development teams meets the real-world demands of our customers.
可用性存在于我们的产品研发团队符合我们的用户真实需求的程度。

When you consider that Microsoft‘s mission is to enable people to do their best, the importance of usability is clear. This work is as much about people as it is about technology. Fostering usability draws on expertise from varied fields, including anthropology, cognitive psychology, computer science, and educational psychology.
当你认识到微软的使命是让人们做得更好，可用性的重要性就显而易见了。这个工作涉及人和涉及技术是同样多的，推进可用性吸纳了来自各个领域的专家，包括人类学、认知心理学、计算机科学、教育心理学。

Microsoft maintains state-of-the-art facilities (more than 30 participant/observation rooms and five analysis labs) devoted to exploring how customers can better interact with our products.
微软维持了一个艺术级的机构（超过30为参与者或观察者房间和5个分析实验室）致力于探索用户如何更好的与我们的产品交互。

A few job titles found here:
Usability Engineer可以性工程师
Designs and conducts software and hardware usability studies; gathers, analyzes, interprets, and reports findings.

Usability Manager可用性经理
Directs usability engineers tasked with planning and conducting usability studies, and works with team to identify and implement appropriate data-gathering and analysis techniques.

Software Test Manager软件测试经理
Oversees product testing within a product unit, designs master test plans and schedules, and manages test organization via test leads.

Software Design Engineer in Test　负责测试的软件设计工程师
Tests and critiques software components and interfaces in more technical depth, writes test programs to assure quality, and develops test tools to increase effectiveness.

Software Test Architect　软件测试架构师
Identifies test design and implementation improvements, runs pilot projects to measure their impact, and drives adoption across various Microsoft product development teams

Below is a listing of published papers and presentations from Microsoft‘s Usability Engineers.  
以下是一个已出版的论文清单和微软可用性工程师的推荐。

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 that Improve Games.   Game Developer‘s Conference 2002 Proceedings, San Jose CA, March 2002. Reprinted on the front page of Gamasutra.com on 3.21.02, viewable at http://www./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 case study."   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. (in press). Designing for fun: User-testing case studies. In M. Blythe, K. Overbeeke, A. Monk, and P. Wright, (Eds.), Funology: From Usability to Enjoyment. Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Methods & Techniques:方法和技术
Benedek, J., Miner, T. (2002). Measuring Desirability: New methods for evaluating desirability in a usability lab setting. In Proceedings of Usability Professionals Association 2002, Orlando, July 8-12.
Benedek, J., Miner, T. (2002). Product Reaction Cards. Appendix to published paper “Measuring Desirability” in Proceedings of Usability Professionals Association 2002, Orlando, July 8-12.
Caulton, D. (1999). Relaxing the Homogeneity Assumption in Discount Usability. Submitted to Behavior and Information Technology.
Czerwinski, M. (1999). Research methods for next generation HCI. In Proceedings of Human-Computer Interaction International 1999, Munich, August 21-27.
Denning, S., Hoiem, D., Simpson, M., & Sullivan, K. (1990). The Value of Thinking-Aloud Protocols in Industry: A Case Study at Microsoft Corporation. In Proceedings of the Human Factors Society 34th Annual Meeting, 1285-1289.
Gilman, E. & Butler, S. (1999). Object Oriented GUI Design: A Practical Application of "The Bridge" Methodology. Proceedings of Usability Professionals Association 99 (Scottsdale AZ, June 29-July 2): 199-208.
Graf, R. (1996). Exploring the design of a sales automation workstation using field research. In D. Wixon and J. Ramey (Eds.), Field Methods Casebook for Software Design, John Wiley & Sons.
Graf, R. (1998). Participatory Design: A case study in designing software for the home. A workshop presentation at the fifth biennial Participatory Design Conference, Seattle, WA, November 12-14, 1998.
Hanna, L., Risden, K., Czerwinski, M., & Alexander, K. (1999). The role of usability research in designing children’s computer products. In A. Druin (Ed.), The Design of Children’s Technology (pp. 3-26). San Francisco, 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 Web Development, Lawrence Erlbaum, New York.
Muller, M. & Czerwinski, M. (1999). Organizing usability work to fit 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 the usability of an evolving collaborative product --changes in user type, tasks and evaluation methods over time. In proceedings of the international ACM SIGGROUP conference on supporting group work (GROUP99) p150-159

Risden, K. (1999). Toward usable browse hierarchies for the Web. In Bullinger, 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 development company. In Proceedings of the CHI 2000 conference on Human Factors in computing 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 and Appeal. Microsoft Developer Network Web Workshop (online ed.).   Copyright © 1997 by Microsoft Corporation.

Tools:工具
Hoiem, D. & Sullivan, K. (1994). Designing and Using Integrated Data Collection and Analysis Tools: Challenges and Considerations. Behaviour and Information Technology, 13, 160-170.
Sullivan, K. (1993, July). Dealing with Limited Data Analysis Time and Limited Availability of Usability Specialists. In K. Sullivan (Chair), Usability Lab Tools: How Organizational Constraints Shape Their Development (session 11). Panel conducted at the Usability Professionals Association Conference, Redmond, WA.

Human-Computer Interaction 人机交互
Benedek, J. (2002). MSN.com Redesigned: Usability and organizational tradeoffs in the redesign of a popular portal. In Proceedings of Usability Professionals Association 2002, Orlando, July 8-12.
Caulton, D. and Dye, K. (1997). Do Users Always Benefit When User Interfaces 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 visual navigation: An empirical study. In The New Review for Hypertext and Multimedia, Volume 3, pp. 40-66.
Chen, C. & Czerwinski, M. (1998). From latent semantics to spatial hypertext--An Integrated Approach. In Hypertext ‘98, The Proceedings of the 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 of Human-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 for information management and retrieval. In Proceedings of CHI ’99, Human Factors 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 and spatial location memory to web page retrieval in 3D. In Proceedings of Interact ‘99, Edinburgh, Scotland, Sept. 1-4.
Dziadosz, S. and Chandrasekar, R. (2002) Do Thumbnail Previews Help Users Make Better Relevance Decisions about Web Search Results? In Proceedings of SIGIR 2002, Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval (Tempere, Finland, August 11-15, 2002), ACM Press, 365-366.
Graf, R. C. (1993). A Three Level Connectionist Model for Contextual Interference 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). Developing Miniature Force-Sensing Technologies for Measuring the forces Applied to a Computer Mouse. In Proceedings of the XIVth Triennial Congress of the IEA and the 44th Annual Meeting of the HFES, (San Diego, July 29-August 2, 2000), Vol. 6, pp629-632.
Konrad, C. & Angevine, P. (2000). Cooperative Design of Microsoft Office. In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Human Interaction with Complex Systems, Urbana, IL, April 30 - May 2, 2000.
Larson, K. & Czerwinski, M. (1998). Web page design: Implications of memory, structure and scent for information retrieval. In Proceedings of CHI ’98, Human Factors in Computing Systems (LA, April 21-23, 1998), ACM press, 25-32. Copyright © 1998 by ACM, Inc.

Lee, W.O. (1998) Analysis of User Testing using an Approximate Model 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). Infrared Thermography to Qualify and Quantify Interaction Between Hand and Computer Mouse and Its Relationship to Comfort. In Proceedings of the XIVth Triennial Congress of the IEA and the 44th Annual Meeting of the HFES, (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 for document management. In Proceedings of UIST ‘98, 11th Annual Symposium on 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 Contextual Interference Effects in Motor Learning. Paper presented at the invitational conference, Cognitive Assessment: Interdisciplinary Dialog, sponsored by the College of Education, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX.
Shea, J. & Graf, R. (1992). A model for contextual interference effects in motor learning. In C. R. Reynolds (Ed.), Cognitive Assessment: A Multidisciplinary Perspective, New York: Plenum Press.
Sullivan, K. (1991). Using Task Analysis in Documentation Field Research. In ACM Ninth International Conference on Systems Documentation, 149-153. Copyright © 1991 by ACM, Inc.

Sullivan, K. (1996). The Windows 95 User Interface: A Case Study in Usability Engineering. In Proceedings of ACM CHI 96 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 473-480. Copyright © 1996 by ACM, Inc.

Sullivan, K. (1997). The Windows 95 user interface: Iterative design and problem tracking in action. Proceedings of the 1997 International Conference on Software Engineering, 562-563. Copyright © 1997 by ACM, Inc.  
Wixon, D. (1995). The Sales Automation Workstation: A Case Study Of Field Oriented Design. A paper presented at the workshop, Field Oriented Design Techniques: Case Studies and Organizing Dimensions. CHI ‘95, Denver, CO. Copyright © 1995 by ACM, Inc.