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Measuring Usability Homepage
Quantitative Usability, Statistics & Six Sigma by Jeff Sauro
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Thank you for your interest in Measuring Usability. Updates are sent about every month or so (sometimes less frequently). An example of what to expect in an update is shown below as well as frequency of all previous updates.


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Example of an Email Update: Sent January 8, 2007:
I was guest editor for the recent release of ACM’s Interactions Magazine, “Waits and Measures: Quantifying Usability,” and a new calculator that supports the article on sample size calculation was added.

Sample Size Calculator for Discovering Problems in a User Interface
Use this calculator to determine the number of users you'd need to test given the probability of detecting a UI problem. If the probability of detecting the problem is unknown, this calculator also allows you to estimate the problem occurrence (p) from sample data. The calculator is based on work done by Jim Lewis at IBM.

If you're not familiar with the technique of determining sample sizes for discovering the number of problems in an interface, Jim provides an excellent discussion in the special edition. If you don’t have a subscription to the ACM portal, there is an article with some similar content referenced on the calculator page.

The User in the Numbers
Finally, a pre-published version of the article, “The User in the Numbers” which appeared in the Nov-Dec. issue of Interactions, is available for download. I’ve attempted to explain in simple terms some popular statistical topics you might encounter in the more technical literature on measuring usability (the p-value, alpha, beta, Type I, Type II Errors, Power and Confidence Intervals).

I’d be interested in your feedback on that piece (what was made clear, what wasn’t, what other topics need elucidating).

Jeff


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