DESCRIPTION OF USABILITY PROBLEMS IN AUGMENTED REALITY USER INTERFACES

Abstract

Finding and reporting usability problems properly through usability evaluation methods such as heuristic evaluation is an essential part of the UI development process, but the usability problems found can be often described abstractly, despite the re-quest for detailed description. It is necessary to identify the factors that make the evalua-tor describe the abstract usability problems and consider them in the usability evaluation process. This study aims to explore which factors influence the evaluator’s description types of usability problems. The experiments were conducted with a total of 46 partici-pants, who were assigned randomly to use one of two heuristic types (general vs. specific) for heuristic evaluation and asked to interact with both of two types of augmented reality (AR) user interfaces (UI) (high level vs. low level of user interaction) and to describe us-ability problems of AR UI while conducting maintenance tasks for computer components. Based on the collected usability problems, the evaluator’s description types of usability problems (abstract vs. concrete) were coded for the dependent variable. The mixed ef-fects logistic regression was applied to finding significant factors among heuristic type, user interaction level, gender, language (Korean vs. English) and AR experience (high vs. low vs. none) affecting the evaluator’s description types of usability problems. As a result of analysis, it was found that user interaction level and language are significant factors to affect the evaluator’s description types of usability problems. Implications for practitioners were provided based on these experimental results. © 2022 ICIC International.