Recent usability studies of Nielsen Norman Group with touch phone users from US, UK, Australia, Netherlands, etc., revealed 38% average failure rate of mobile sites and 26% failure for mobile apps. It is twice as hard to understand content on small devices as it is on desktop screens. The problems faced by mobile users is [...]
How can one define and measure usefulness of a product? We discuss this topic in the paper “Measuring a product’s usefulness” to be presented at the ergonomics world congress IEA 2012. Paper is written in collaboration with Prof. Jean-Marc Robert (École Polytechnique of Montreal) and Tigran Atoyan, M.Sc. (University of Oxford). A product’s usefulness can [...]
Situation (Business and user experience objectives): Because of the growing trend of online insurance shopping, the brokerage insurance company Merlin wanted to get online presence and gain this market share along with the existing broker channels. The company did not want to upset their brokers and lose their business while implementing online presence. They hence [...]
Situation: Cognitive Group has been hired to look at back office operations of one of the world’s largest financial institutions for the fulfillment of commercial loans. When the client requests a new loan or loan increase, the bank needs to update all of the information regarding the client, the financial risk, and the securities, to [...]
Apple products are intuitive and easy to use. They have proven that user experience is a primary quality. Quality made Apple the best brand in the world. However, there are still usability issues in Apple products. For instance, the multi-touch functionality is not consistently applied across all applications. It is also underused in many applications. [...]
In May Cognitive Group met with peers to present “Uncertainties in complex dynamic environment”. The presentation was connected with the review paper of Hasmik Atoyan recently accepted by JIPS (Journal d’Interaction Personne-Système). The paper is done in collaboration with Dr. Jean-Marc Robert (École Polytechnique de Montréal) and Dr. Jean-Rémi Duquet (Lockheed Martin Canada). The paper [...]
Topic: Decision Illusion This talk from Dan Ariely is a must see (presented at the TED conference, posted May 2009) People have visual illusions and cognitive (decision-making) illusions. In visual illusion we can easily demonstrate mistakes. For example, we can measure to verify if our visual comparison is right. Cognitive (decision-making) illusion is not easy [...]
Situation The Quebec Worker Compensation Board (CSST) provides services to 3 million workers across the province of Quebec in Canada. The information technology department of the CSST was looking to improve the quality of their help desk. The Information Technology support service provides on-line technical support and maintains the CSST network infrastructure. There was indications [...]
When using a system, a tool, a software, I want to accomplish a goal, a task I expect the system to provide me the information and tools necessary for me to accomplish my task I want to be able to accomplish my task in the natural flown of my thinking: Search for information Look at [...]
Moody’s gave the best rating to PCAA in 2007. Desjardins lost 591 million because of PCAA in the last quarter of 2008. In 2009, Moody’s express warning on the Risk Management at Desjardins since they do not manage properly complex financial products such as the PCAA. It appears that overconfidence in Moody’s was one of [...]