Abstract Tasks: A Tool for the Inspection of Web Sites and Off-Line Hypermedia

This paper discusses a systematic method for inspecting the usability of on-line and off-line hypermedia. The core idea of our approach is the use of an organized list of Abstract Tasks to guide the inspector's activity. An Abstract Task specifies a pattern of inspection operations that the evaluator is required to perform on some specific features of a hypermedia. Abstract Tasks capture our expertise in usability inspection, and express it in a precise and understandable form, so that it can be easily `reproduced', communicated, and exploited. They help transferring usability expertise from experienced to inexperienced inspectors, and sharing know-how among different evaluators. Thus, different inspectors who systematically apply the same set of Abstract Tasks are more likely to come up with consistent results, and the overall quality of their inspection (in terms of completeness and accurateness of the findings) is greatly improved. The paper briefly introduces the background of our approach and explains the rationale of Abstract Tasks. It also provides some examples of Abstract Tasks (out of the 43 currently defined) and of inspection results achieved by applying them to inspect WWW sites and commercial CD-ROMs.