Introduction to Volume 15, Issue 4

Our August 2020 issue features an essay from Douglas Gillan, “Usability Issues in Human-Robot Interaction.” This essay describes the variety of robots with which humans currently interact and with whom we will interact in the future. To avoid the “productivity paradox” that followed the introduction of computers to the general workplace, it is very important […] [Read More]

Invited Essay: Usability Issues in Human-Robot Interaction

What We Mean When We Talk About Robots The term “robot” comes to us from the Czech artist Josef Capek and his playwright brother, Karel, who wrote R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots; 1921). They coined the term “robot” from the Czech word robota, which denotes labor by servants. The play, R.U.R., was about a world in […] [Read More]

How Professionals Moderate Usability Tests

Abstract This paper reports how 15 experienced usability professionals and one team of two graduate students moderated usability tests. The purpose of the study is to investigate the approaches to moderation used by experienced professionals. Based on this work, we present our analysis of some of the characteristics that distinguish good from poor moderation. In […] [Read More]

Positive Developments but Challenges Still Ahead: A Survey Study on UX Professionals’ Work Practices

Abstract This paper describes and gives an overview of User Experience (UX) professionals’ work practices—their environment, practices, tools, and challenges. First, we reviewed 32 empirical studies about usability and UX work to identify key issues in usability and UX work practices. For the identified key issues, we collected data from 422 UX professionals surveyed in […] [Read More]

On the Usage of Cronbach’s Alpha to Measure Reliability of UX Scales

Abstract If, as UX professionals, we measure the user experience of a product with a questionnaire, then scale reliability is important. If the scales of the questionnaire show low reliability, we cannot guarantee stable measurements and should not base important design decisions on such data. There are several methods available to estimate the reliability of […] [Read More]