Introduction to Volume 18, Issue 3

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Our May 2023 essay is “We Need to Talk About How We Talk About Accessibility” by Sarah Horton and Erin Lauridsen. Consistent with recent concerns in the UX community about how word choice can have unintentional negative effects on marginalized populations, they present examples of how this can be problematic and strategies for providing better support for accessibility and disability inclusion.

In addition to the essay, this issue includes two research papers: One is on the think-aloud methodology, and the other is a literature review of UX in e-government services.

The first article is “Talking About Thinking Aloud: Perspectives from Interactive Think-Aloud Practitioners,” by Liam O’Brien and Stephanie Wilson. Despite its well-known problems with reliability (such as the evaluator effect), interactive think-aloud is a very popular usability testing method. Analysis of interviews with practitioners revealed some novel practices and attitudes that support a broader view of validity in usability evaluation.

The second article is “UX in E-government Services for Citizens: A Systematic Literature Review,” by Asma Aldrees and Denis Gračanin. More and more, government services are available online with all the usual benefits (such as 24/7 access, no waiting in line, and no making and keeping appointments). In this paper, the authors selected 75 state-of-the-art studies from an initial set of 672 published between 2000 and 2022. They reviewed them to identify six major user experience concerns with e-government services, and they end with recommendations on enhancing the quality of citizens’ interactions with these services.

Published in: in Volume 18, Issue 3,

The Authors

  • Photo of Bill AbertBill Albert

    Dr. Albert is Senior Vice President and Global Head of User Experience at Mach49, a growth incubator for global businesses. Prior to joining Mach49, Bill was Executive Director of the User Experience Center and Adjunct Professor in Human Factors in Information Design at Bentley University. He has presented his work in user experience at more than 50 national and international conferences, and has published his research in the areas of eye tracking, data visualization, service design, and information design. He co-wrote (with Tom Tullis) the first book on UX metrics, Measuring the User Experience: Collecting, Analyzing, and Presenting UX Metrics (third edition published in 2022). He also co-wrote (with Tom Tullis and Donna Tedesco) Beyond the Usability Lab: Conducting Large-Scale Online User Experience Studies in 2010. He received his PhD from Boston University. He completed a post-doc at Nissan Cambridge Basic Research focusing on cognitive demands in the use of navigation systems.

  • James R. (Jim) Lewis, Ph.D

    Dr. Lewis is a Distinguished User Experience Researcher at MeasuringU. He has published influential papers on the assessment of perceived usability and sample size estimation for usability studies and has product experience in the design and evaluation of user interfaces (graphical, spoken, mobile), including having been the lead interaction designer for the product widely regarded as the first smart phone, the Simon. He is on over 90 US patents and has over 100 publications. His five books include Practical Speech User Interface Design and, with Jeff Sauro, Quantifying the User Experience and Surveying the User Experience. In 2021 he was inducted into the Academy of Medicine, Engineering, and Science of Florida.