Cognitive Accessibility of Information in Interactive Systems

认知漫游(CW)是一种可用性检查方法，旨在评估学习认知构件(如计算机软件)的易用性。最新的版本比以前的版本简化了很多，仍然很难应用于现实生活环境，因为如果没有认知心理学和可用性评估的背景，分析师将很难理解他们到底应该评估什么。困难可能在一定程度上是由于CW问题解决的问题与分析师可能寻找的问题之间的粒度不匹配。我们建议，如果基于适当的人机交互(HCI)模型生成CW问题，则可以缓解这种粒度失配。在这个项目中，我们扩展了诺曼的人机界面模型，加入了对象与动作和感知与理解的区别，然后提出了一个扩展的认知漫游，它的问题明确地解决了识别正确对象的容易/ac…更多的感受和感知/理解它们。对最新的CW和我们的ECW的比较评估表明，这些新引入的区别可以使CW更容易进行，并在识别可用性问题方面更有效。此外，我们确认，通过为在线ECW评估开发的软件工具，残疾人士可以在自己的位置远程进行网站的ECW，而不需要他们在可用性实验室。尽管与用户进行测试被广泛认为是确定设计问题的一种有效方式，否则这些问题甚至可能被评估专家忽视，但人们也认识到，招募适当的参与者经常成为用户测试的问题。对残疾人进行测试的一个特殊挑战是，根据他们的残疾类型和程度，他们可能很难，如果不是不可能的话，他们会离开家参加用户测试。该报告是对残疾人士的第一手判断，反映了他们因个别残疾而产生的特殊需要，是有见地和有价值的。较少

The cognitive walkthrough (CW) is a usability inspection method aimed at evaluating the ease of learning cognitive artifacts such as computer software. The latest version, much simplified from its predecessor, was still difficult to apply to real-life environment because without background in cognitive psychology and usability evaluation it would be difficult for analysts to understand what exactly they were supposed to evaluate. The difficulty may partly be due to the granularity mismatch between what CW questions address and what analysts are likely to look for. We suggest that such granularity mismatch be alleviated if CW questions are generated based on a proper model of human-computer interaction (HCI). In this project, we extended Norman's HCI model by incorporating such distinctions as "object versus action" and "perceiving versus understanding" and then proposed an Extended Cognitive Walkthrough (ECW) whose questions explicitly address the ease of identifying correct objects/ac … More tions and of perceiving/understanding them. A comparative evaluation of the latest CW and our ECW indicated that those newly-introduced distinctions could make the CW easier to conduct and more effective in identifying usability problems.In addition, we confirmed that with a software tool developed for the online ECW evaluation, persons with disabilities were able to conduct the ECW for Web sites remotely at their own location without requiring them to be in a usability laboratory. Although testing with users is widely acknowledged as an effective way of identifying design problems that may otherwise be overlooked by even evaluation specialists, it is also recognized that recruiting appropriate participants often becomes problematic for user testing. A particular challenge for testing with persons with disabilities is that depending on the types and degrees of their disabilities it can be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for them to come away from home to participate in user testing. The ECW results were insightful and valuable as they were first-hand judgments of the persons with disabilities, reflecting their particular needs arising from individual disabilities. Less