Troubleshooting Analysis

Two Reasons for Conducting a Troubleshooting Analysis

There are two primary reasons for conducting a troubleshooting analysis of products: identifying issues before they become problems or finding and fixing existing problems. Although the methods for each type of analysis may differ slightly, both have the same goal: fix problems in user interface designs.

Identify Issues Before They Become Problems

Purchasing a product with a poorly designed user interface can costs a company millions in lost productivity. A troubleshooting analysis can avoid this loss because problems are identified before the purchasing decision is made. Atlantic Human Factors uses an array of human factors methods in order to identify and resolve potential problems with a user interface design before it is deployed.

For example, a company plans to upgrade to a new release of software but is apprehensive for fear that user performance may change in some undesirable way. In order to determine whether or not the user interface design has problems, the human factors analyst can:

• Examine the user interface for standards and principles compliance with expert reviews.
• Check the user interface for accessibility compliance.
• Study users with interviews, focus groups, observations, and surveys.
• Conduct any other number of cognitive task analysis, defined as A family of tools and methods for obtaining knowledge that organizes and gives meaning to behavior and decisions,   techniques.

Following the analysis, suggestions for adjustments to the user interface or training procedures are provided.

Find and Fix Existing Problems

Lower performance and productivity when using a new product could be attributed to poor user interface design. For example, a company upgrades to a new release of software and productivity suddenly drops. In order to investigate how the new user interface may have hurt productivity, the human factors analyst can perform analyses such as:

• User observations
• Fault or root-cause analysis, defined as A a step by step method that leads to the discovery of a fault's first or root cause.
• Interviews, focus groups, and surveys.
• Expert reviews of the new and old user interfaces.
• Competitive analysis of the new and old interfaces.
• Conduct any other number of cognitive task analysis, defined as A family of tools and methods for obtaining knowledge that organizes and gives meaning to behavior and decisions,   techniques.

Following the analysis, suggestions for adjustments to the user interface or training procedures can be provided.