The impact of thinking-aloud on usability inspection

Sharon McDonald; Gilbert Cockton; Alastair Irons

doi:10.1145/3397876

The impact of thinking-aloud on usability inspection

Sharon McDonald, Gilbert Cockton, Alastair Irons

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)

Abstract

This study compared the results of a usability inspection conducted under two separate conditions: An explicit concurrent think-aloud that required explanations and silent working. 12 student analysts inspected two travel websites thinking-aloud and working in silence to produce a set of problem predictions. Overall, the silent working condition produced more initial predictions, but the think-aloud condition yielded a greater proportion of accurate predictions as revealed by falsification testing. The analysts used a range of problem discovery methods with system searching being favoured by the silent working condition and the more active, goal playing discovery method in the think-aloud condition. Thinking-aloud was also associated with a broader spread of knowledge resources.

Original language	English
Article number	88
Number of pages	22
Journal	Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
Volume	4
Issue number	EICS
Early online date	7 May 2020
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/3397876
Publication status	Published - 18 Jun 2020
Externally published	Yes

Keywords

Usability inspection
Heuristic evaluation
Think-aloud
Evaluation resources

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The impact of thinking-aloud on usability inspection

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Keywords

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