Jeff Tian's Research in UI/UX

Jeff Tian's Research in UI/UX: Usability Evaluation and Improvement

My research in this area concentrates on effective models and techniques that not only help us evaluate the usability of interactive systems from a user's perspective but also improve usability and user experience (UI/UX improvement). My research in UI/UX covers the following topics:

Problems identification and usability improvement:

We developed a new method to identify usability problems based on comparing actual and anticipated usage patterns. The actual usage patterns were extracted from server logs to identify users, user sessions, and user task-oriented transactions, and then applying a usage-mining algorithm to discover patterns among actual usage paths. The anticipated usage was specified by cognitive experts. The comparison yield deviation data that can help us discover usability issues and suggest corrective actions. The usability improvement was quantified by the higher task success rate and lower time and effort for given tasks after suggested corrections were implemented. A software tool was developed to automate a significant part of the activities involved. This research is summarized in the following paper:

R. Geng and J. Tian, Improving Web Navigation Usability by Comparing Actual and Anticipated Usage, IEEE Trans. on Human Machine Systems, Vol.45, No.1, pp.84-94. Feb. 2015.

Maintaining accurate usage models:

Markov operational profile (OP) is a type of usage models for interactive applications and their UI that can help us ensure and maximize product reliability and usability. This project was successful at maintaining accurate Markov OP during system maintenance and evolution using updates derived from existing task models for UI design or activity diagrams for UI/system implementation. This research is summarized in the following papers:

G. Karami and J. Tian, "Applying Task Models from Human Computer Interaction to Support and Improve Usage Based Statistical Testing for Web Applications", Int. J. of Computers and Their Applications, Vol.25, No.2, pp.64-75, June, 2018.
G. Karami and J. Tian, "Maintaining accurate web usage models using updates from activity diagrams", Information and Software Technology, Vol.96, pp.68-77, April, 2018.

Resolving usability issues in safety-critical systems:

Failures in software related safety-critical systems could result in disastrous accidents. Usability plays a significant role in such safety-critical systems, where interface, interaction, or usability problems can be contributing factors or even main causes for accidents. In this study, we developed a comprehensive classification and analysis framework to analyze and resolve usability issues in safety-critical systems.

Prepared by Jeff Tian (tian@engr.smu.edu).
Last update: Nov. 6, 2018.