The main focus of ARIS ProcessWorld and ARIS User Day is on sharing best practices between ARIS users by having many different presentations and discussion rounds. As there are so many ARIS users around, it is, of course, a good idea to also ask them about how they experience the usage of the different ARIS products. This is done during the conference in the ARIS Usability Lab…
Today in the morning, I went to the ARIS Usability Lab here at ARIS ProcessWorld in Berlin to see how the usability tests are done. The ARIS Usability Lab is lead by Sabine Norek, who is the responsible manager for ARIS’ usability. There is a long tradition of testing the usability during such IDS Scheer events with end-users.
In the picture you can see a part of the usability lab. The customer is asked to complete several tasks in ARIS like creating a new model or formatting object attributes. The tasks assigned are selected based on the interest of the user. For example, if someone is interested in BPMN modelling, a BPMN modelling task is assigned to the user.
While performing the task, the screen seen by the user is forwarded to two other monitors, which are observed by two usability test engineers. In addition, the user’s face is filmed while performing the task. Both usability test engineers are constantly taking notes while the user is performing the task. Those notes are analysed in the following days to extract improvement possibilities for the ARIS user interface.
Many users share their experience with using ARIS during those usability test sessions. They are pointing to typical problems they are facing and they make valuable suggestions how the software can be improved. Many users are also happy to see that their experience is gathered and that they have a direct impact how the ARIS software evolves.
