Performance or system responsiveness comes up often in usability surveys as one of the top 3 usability problems. There are a few issues here:
1. Consider both performance and performance variability. If a system has a great deal of variance in performance that lends unpredictibility to the user experience, that might be worse than a long, but predictable experience where you can do other tasks. 2. There are many factors that affect perceived responsiveness. For example, good progress feedback can influence the perception of responsiveness. 3. In your testing, consider realistic databases. You might have a small testing database, but gather data on the sizes of your customers databases. 4. Consider that performance can be too fast. There is some research showing that performance that is too fast or too slow will result in more errors than a mid-range response. 5. Direct manipulation and immediate control responses need to be responsive or people will feel like they are working in a tub of jello. 6. Perceived time will be influenced by the user's perception of the size and complexity of an operation. So, if you are loading gigabytes of photos, you will accept fairly slow response, but the same may not be true of operations that are judged as not so complex. 7. If you are looking at performance of your system, consider response time, response variability, scalability, and startup or launch time as three major buckets to consider. Chauncey On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 7:00 AM, Baruch Sachs <[email protected]> wrote: > I am talking more on the technical performance side, keeping in mind the UX > ramifications. For instance, a lot of UIs might be designed well from the > design side but perform poorly (slow loading, refreshing a whole page vs a > section on the page, etc) which ultimately negatively affects the UI. > > I have been asked to assist with the development of this methodology, using > the UX to drive what we should be testing for. I have my own experience, but > wants to get a broader sense of the topic. I sense that we do not often have > the opportunity to influence this area.. > > On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 9:24 PM, Chauncey Wilson <[email protected]> > wrote: >> >> Hello Baruch, >> >> Could you describe a bit more what you mean by performance testing of >> the user interface? There is benchmark usability testing, but also >> performance testing of widgets under different loads and system >> testing of various types of responsiveness. >> >> Thanks, >> Chauncey >> >> On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 6:19 PM, Baruch Sachs <[email protected]> wrote: >> > Lookng for any resources available on methodologies for performance >> > testing, >> > focusing specifically on the User Interface...preliminary searches >> > bringing >> > up very little. Hoping someone can assist...thanks in advance! >> > ________________________________________________________________ >> > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! >> > To post to this list ....... [email protected] >> > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe >> > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines >> > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help >> > > > ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
