Measuring Usability with the USE Questionnaire 用 USE 问卷衡量可用性
Article January 2001 文章 2001 年 1 月
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Arnold Lund 阿诺德-伦德
University of Washington Bothell 华盛顿大学博特尔分校
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Measuring Usability with the USE Questionnaire 用 USE 问卷衡量可用性
By Arnold M. Lund 作者：阿诺德-M-伦德
There are a variety of issues that tend to recur in the life of a user interface designer. I recall the first time I was asked to write performance requirements for a user interface. How should I go about deciding on an acceptable level of errors or an acceptable speed of accomplishing a standard task? How do I know whether I have improved an interface design enough? Of the many problems that need fixing, which ones should take priority? How do I even know whether improving the user interface of a product is going to have an impact on sales? At one company, we sold usability so successfully one of the business units declared they wanted to label each product with a "usability seal of approval." How would one go about determining when to award such a seal? 在用户界面设计师的生活中，往往会反复出现各种各样的问题。我记得第一次被要求为用户界面编写性能要求时的情景。我应该如何确定可接受的错误水平或完成标准任务的可接受速度？我怎样才能知道我对界面设计的改进是否足够？在众多需要解决的问题中，哪些应该优先解决？我怎么知道改进产品的用户界面是否会对销售产生影响？在一家公司，我们成功地推销了可用性，其中一个业务部门宣称，他们想给每件产品贴上 "可用性认证 "的标签。怎样才能确定何时授予这种印章呢？
Over the years I have worked with colleagues at Ameritech (where the work began), U.S. WEST Advanced Technologies, and most recently Sapient to create a tool that has helped in dealing with some of these questions. The tool that we developed is called the USE Questionnaire. USE stands for Usefulness, Satisfaction, and Ease of use. These are the three dimensions that emerged most strongly in the early development of the USE Questionnaire. For many applications, Usability appears to consist of Usefulness and Ease of Use, and Usefulness and Ease of Use are correlated. Each factor in turn drives user satisfaction and frequency of use. Users appear to have a good sense of what is usable and what is not, and can apply their internal metrics across domains. 多年来，我与 Ameritech（这项工作的起点）、美国西部先进技术公司（U.S. WEST Advanced Technologies）以及最近的 Sapient 公司的同事合作，开发了一种有助于解决其中一些问题的工具。我们开发的工具名为 USE 问卷。USE 是有用性、满意度和易用性的缩写。这三个维度在 USE 问卷的早期开发过程中表现得最为突出。对于许多应用程序来说，可用性似乎由有用性和易用性组成，而有用性和易用性是相互关联的。每个因素反过来又推动用户的满意度和使用频率。用户似乎对什么是可用的、什么是不可用的有很好的认识，并能跨领域地应用他们的内部衡量标准。
General Background 一般背景
Subjective reactions to the usability of a product or application tend to be neglected in favor of performance measures, and yet it is often the case that these metrics measure the aspects of the user experience that are most closely tied to user behavior and purchase decisions. While some tools exist for assessing software usability, they typically are proprietary (and may only be available for a fee). More importantly, they do not do a good job of assessing usability across domains. When re-engineering began at Ameritech, it became important to be able to set benchmarks for product usability and to be able to measure progress against those benchmarks. It also was critical to ensure resources were being used as efficiently as possible, and so tools to help select the most cost-effective methodology and the ability to prioritize design problems to be fixed by developers became important. Finally, it became clear that we could eliminate all the design problems and still end up with a product that would fail in the marketplace. 对产品或应用程序可用性的主观反应往往会因为性能指标而被忽视，然而这些指标往往能够衡量与用户行为和购买决策最密切相关的用户体验。虽然存在一些评估软件可用性的工具，但它们通常都是专有的（可能需要付费才能使用）。更重要的是，它们不能很好地评估跨领域的可用性。当 Ameritech 公司开始重新设计时，重要的是能够为产品可用性设定基准，并能够根据这些基准衡量进展情况。此外，确保尽可能高效地利用资源也是至关重要的，因此，帮助选择最具成本效益的方法的工具，以及对开发人员需要解决的设计问题进行优先排序的能力也变得非常重要。最后，我们清楚地认识到，我们可以消除所有的设计问题，但最终得到的产品仍然会在市场上失败。
It was with this environment as a background that a series of studies began at Ameritech. The first one was headed by Amy Schwartz, and was a collaboration of human factors, market research in our largest marketing organization, and a researcher from the University of Michigan business school. Building on that research, I decided to develop a short questionnaire that could be used to measure the most important dimensions of usability for users, and to measure those dimensions across domains. Ideally it should work for software, hardware, services, and user support materials. It should allow meaningful comparisons of products in different domains, even though testing of the products happened at different times and perhaps under different circumstances. In the best of all worlds, the items would have a certain amount of face validity for both users and practitioners, and it would be possible to imagine the aspects of the design that might influence ratings of the items. It would not be intended to be a diagnostic tool, but rather would treat the dimensions of usability as dependent variables. Subsequent research would assess how various aspects of a given category of design would impact usability ratings. 正是在这样的环境背景下，Ameritech 开始了一系列研究。第一项研究由艾米-施瓦茨（Amy Schwartz）领导，由人为因素、我们最大的营销机构的市场研究以及密歇根大学商学院的一位研究人员合作完成。在这项研究的基础上，我决定开发一份简短的调查问卷，用来测量对用户来说最重要的可用性维度，并跨领域测量这些维度。理想情况下，它应该适用于软件、硬件、服务和用户支持材料。它应该能够对不同领域的产品进行有意义的比较，即使产品的测试是在不同的时间、不同的环境下进行的。在最好的情况下，这些项目对于用户和从业人员来说都具有一定的表面效度，而且可以想象出设计的哪些方面可能会影响项目的评分。它的目的不是作为一种诊断工具，而是将可用性的各个维度作为因变量来处理。随后的研究将评估特定设计类别的各个方面对可用性评分的影响。
The early studies at Ameritech suggested that a viable questionnaire could be created. Interestingly, the results of those early studies were consistent with studies conducted in the MIS and technology diffusion areas, which also had identified the importance of and the relationship between Usefulness, Satisfaction, and Ease of Use. Furthermore, the rich research tradition in these other areas provides theory that may be extended to explain the relationships. This is an area that provides a link between academic research and practice, and it is informed by several disciplines. Some work has already been published suggesting that at least one publicly available tool drawn from earlier research can be applied effectively to software interfaces. Ameritech 公司的早期研究表明，可行的调查问卷是可以制作出来的。有趣的是，这些早期研究的结果与管理信息系统和技术传播领域的研究结果是一致的，这些研究也发现了有用性、满意度和易用性之间的重要性和关系。此外，这些其他领域丰富的研究传统也提供了可用于解释这些关系的理论。这是一个将学术研究与实践联系起来的领域，它受到多个学科的影响。已经发表的一些研究成果表明，从早期研究中汲取的至少一种公开可用的工具可以有效地应用于软件界面。
How It Developed 发展历程
The first step in identifying potential items for the questionnaire was to collect a large pool of items to test. The items were collected from previous internal studies, from the literature, and from 确定问卷潜在项目的第一步是收集一大批项目进行测试。这些项目是从以前的内部研究、文献以及
brainstorming. The list was then massaged to eliminate or reword items that could not be applied across the hardware, software, documentation, and service domains. One goal was to make the items as simply worded as possible, and as general as possible. As rounds of testing progressed, standard psychometric techniques were used to weed out additional items that appeared to be too idiosyncratic or to improve items through ongoing tweaking of the wording. In general, the items contributing to each scale were of approximately equal weight, the Chronbach's Alphas were very high, and for the most part the items appeared to tap slightly different aspects of the dimensions being measured. 集思广益。然后，对清单进行修改，删除或重新措辞那些不能应用于硬件、软件、文档和服务领域的项目。我们的目标之一是使这些项目的措辞尽可能简单，并尽可能具有普遍性。随着一轮轮测试的进行，我们使用标准的心理测量技术来剔除显得过于特殊的其他项目，或通过不断调整措辞来改进项目。总的来说，每个量表中的项目所占权重大致相同，Chronbach's Alphas 值非常高，而且大多数项目似乎都在所测维度的不同方面略有不同。
The questionnaires were constructed as seven-point Likert rating scales. Users were asked to rate agreement with the statements, ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Various forms of the questionnaires were used to evaluate user attitudes towards a variety of consumer products. Factor analyses following each study suggested that users were evaluating the products primarily using three dimensions, Usefulness, Satisfaction, and Ease of Use. Evidence of other dimensions was found, but these three served to most effectively discriminate between interfaces. Partial correlations calculated using scales derived for these dimensions suggested that Ease of Use and Usefulness influence one another, such that improvements in Ease of Use improve ratings of Usefulness and vice versa. While both drive Satisfaction, Usefulness is relatively less important when the systems are internal systems that users are required to use. Users are more variable in their Usefulness ratings when they have had only limited exposure to a product. As expected from the literature, Satisfaction was strongly related to 问卷采用七分李克特评分量表。用户被要求对陈述的同意程度进行评分，从 "非常不同意 "到 "非常同意 "不等。不同形式的问卷用于评估用户对各种消费品的态度。每项研究后进行的因素分析表明，用户主要从三个方面对产品进行评价，即有用性、满意度和易用性。虽然也发现了其他维度，但这三个维度最有效地区分了不同的界面。使用这些维度的量表计算出的部分相关性表明，易用性和实用性相互影响，易用性的提高会提高实用性的评分，反之亦然。虽然两者都会影响满意度，但如果系统是用户必须使用的内部系统，那么实用性的重要性就相对较低。当用户只接触过有限的产品时，他们对实用性的评价会有更大的差异。正如文献所预期的那样，满意度与以下因素密切相关
the usage (actual or predicted). For internal systems, the items contributing to Ease of Use for other products actually could be separated into two factors, Ease of Learning and Ease of Use (which were obviously highly correlated). The items that appeared across tests for the three factors plus Ease of Learning are listed below. The items in italics loaded relatively less strongly on the factors. 使用情况（实际或预测）。就内部系统而言，其他产品的易用性项目实际上可以分为两个因素，即学习易用性和使用易用性（这两个因素显然高度相关）。下面列出了在三个因素和 "学习易用性 "测试中出现的项目。斜体项目在各因子上的负荷相对较低。
Usefulness 有用性
It helps me be more effective. 它能帮助我提高效率。
It helps me be more productive. 它能帮助我提高工作效率。
It is useful. 它很有用。
It gives me more control over the activities in my life. 它让我能够更好地控制生活中的各种活动。
It makes the things I want to accomplish easier to get done. 它让我想完成的事情更容易完成。
It saves me time when I use it. 使用它可以节省我的时间。
It meets my needs. 它能满足我的需求。
It does everything I would expect it to do. 它能做我期望它做的一切。
Ease of Use 易用性
It is easy to use. 它易于使用。
It is simple to use. 使用简单。
It is user friendly. 用户界面友好。
It requires the fewest steps possible to accomplish what I want to do with it. 它需要尽可能少的步骤来完成我想做的事情。
It is flexible. 它是灵活的。
Using it is effortless. 使用它毫不费力。
I can use it without written instructions. 我可以在没有书面说明的情况下使用它。
I don't notice any inconsistencies as I use it. 在使用过程中，我没有发现任何不一致的地方。
Both occasional and regular users would like it. 无论是临时用户还是普通用户，都会喜欢它。
I can recover from mistakes quickly and easily. 我可以快速、轻松地从错误中恢复过来。
I can use it successfully every time. 我每次都能成功地使用它。
Ease of Learning 易学性
I learned to use it quickly. 我很快就学会了使用它。
I easily remember how to use it. 我很容易记住如何使用它。
It is easy to learn to use it. 它很容易学会使用。
I quickly became skillful with it. 我很快就熟练地掌握了它。
Satisfaction 满意度
I am satisfied with it. 我很满意。
I would recommend it to a friend. 我会向朋友推荐它。
It is fun to use. 使用起来很有趣。
It works the way I want it to work. 它能按照我想要的方式工作。
It is wonderful. 真是太棒了。
I feel I need to have it. 我觉得我需要拥有它。
It is pleasant to use. 使用起来非常舒适。
Work to refine the items and the scales continues. There is some evidence that for websites and certain consumer products there is an additional dimension of fun or aesthetics associated with making a product compelling. For the dependent variables of primary interest, however, these items appear to be reasonably robust. A short form of the questionnaire is easily constructed by using the three or four most heavily weighted items for each factor. 完善项目和量表的工作仍在继续。有证据表明，对于网站和某些消费品来说，要使产品引人注目，还需要考虑其趣味性或美观性。不过，就主要关注的因变量而言，这些项目似乎相当可靠。使用每个因子中权重最高的三到四个项目，就可以轻松制作出简易问卷。
Conclusion 结论
While the questionnaire has been used successfully by many companies around the world, and as part of several dissertation projects, the development of the questionnaire is still not over. For the reasons cited, this is an excellent starting place. The norms I have developed over the years have been useful in determining when I have achieved sufficient usability to enable success in the market. To truly develop a standardized instrument, however, the items should be taken through a complete psychometric instrument development process. A study I have been hoping to run is one that simultaneously uses the USE Questionnaire and other questionnaires like SUMI or QUIS to evaluate applications. Once a publicly available (i.e., free) standardized questionnaire is available that applies across domains, a variety of interesting lines of research are possible. The USE Questionnaire should continue to be useful as it stands, but I hope the best is yet to come. 虽然该问卷已被世界各地的许多公司成功使用，并作为多个学位论文项目的一部分，但问卷的开发工作仍未结束。由于上述原因，这是一个很好的起点。我多年来制定的规范有助于确定何时达到足够的可用性，以便在市场上取得成功。然而，要真正开发出标准化的工具，应该对项目进行完整的心理测量工具开发过程。我一直希望开展一项研究，同时使用可用性问卷和其他问卷（如 SUMI 或 QUIS）来评估应用程序。一旦有了适用于各个领域的公开（即免费）标准化问卷，就有可能开展各种有趣的研究。目前的 USE 问卷应该会继续发挥作用，但我希望最好的结果还在后面。
Published in Lund, A. M. (2001). Measuring usability with the USE questionnaire. Usability Interface, 8(2), 3-6 (www.stcsig.org/usability/newsletter/index.html). 发表于 Lund, A. M. (2001).用 USE 问卷测量可用性。可用性界面》，8(2), 3-6 ( www.stcsig.org/usability/newsletter/index.html).
For more detail, contact Arnie Lund at alund@acm.org or amlundjr@gmail.com. 欲了解更多详情，请通过 alund@acm.org 或 amlundjr@gmail.com 与 Arnie Lund 联系。