The development and design of visualization solutions that are truly usable is essential for ensuring both their adoption and effectiveness. User-centered design principles, which focus on involving users throughout the entire development process, are well suited for visualization and have been shown to be effective in numerous information visualization endeavors. In this paper, we report a two year long collaboration with combustion scientists that, by applying these design principles, generated multiple results including an in situ visualization technique and a post hoc probability distribution function (PDF) exploration tool. Furthermore, we examine the importance of user-centered design principles and describe lessons learned over the design process in an effort to aid others who also seek to work with scientists for developing effective and usable scientific visualization solutions.
From the Publisher: In A Practical Guide to Usability Testing, the authors begin by defining usability, advocating and explaining the methods of usability engineering and reviewing many techniques for assessing and assuring usability throughout the development process. They then take you through all the steps in planning and conducting a usability test, analyzing data, and using the results to improve both products and processes. Written in plain English and filled with examples from many types of products and tests, A Practical Guide to Usability Testing discusses the full range of testing options from quick studies with a few subjects to more formal tests with carefully designed controls. The authors discuss the place of usability laboratories in testing as well as the skills you need to conduct a test. Included are forms that you can use or modify to conduct a usability test and layouts of existing labs that will help you build your own. The authors, a human factors psychologist and a linguist, have extensive experience conducting research on usability, doing usability testing, helping companies set up usability labs and programs, and teaching usability engineering and testing.  A supremely usable nuts-and-bolts guide for beginners A daily tool of the trade for specialists Handbook of Usability Testing gives you practical, step-by-step guidelines in plain English. Written by Jeffrey Rubin, it arms beginners with the full complement of proven testing tools and techniques. From software, GUIs, and technical documentation, to medical instruments, VCRs, and exercise bikes, no matter what your product, you'll learn to design and administer extremely reliable tests to ensure that people find it easy and desirable to use. * Requires no engineering or human factors training* A rigorous, step-by-step approach - with an eye to common gaffes and pitfalls - saves you months of trial and error* Liberally peppered with real-life examples and case histories taken from a wide range of industries* Packed with extremely usable templates, models, tables, test plans, and other indispensable tools of the trade Contents: S.W. Draper, D.A. Norman, C. Lewis, Introduction. Part I:User Centered System Design. K. Hooper, Architectural Design: An Analogy. L.J. Bannon, Issues in Design: Some Notes. D.A. Norman, Cognitive Engineering. Part II:The Interface Experience. B.K. Laurel, Interface as Mimesis. E.L. Hutchins, J.D. Hollan, D.A. NormanDirect Manipulation Interfaces. A.A. diSessa, Notes on the Future of Programming: Breaking the Utility Barrier. Part III:Users' Understandings. M.S. Riley, User Understanding. C. Lewis, Understanding What's Happening in System Interactions. D. Owen, Naive Theories of Computation. A.A. diSessa, Models of Computation. W. Mark, Knowledge-Based Interface Design. Part IV:User Activities. A. Cypher, The Structure of Users' Activities. Y. Miyata, D.A. Norman, Psychological Issues in Support of Multiple Activities. R. Reichman, Communication Paradigms for a Window System. Part V:Toward a Pragmatics of Human-Machine Communication. W. Buxton, There's More to Interaction Than Meets the Eye: Some Issues in Manual Input. S.W. Draper, Display Managers as the Basis for User-Machine Communication. Part VI:Information Flow. D. Owen, Answers First, Then Questions. C.E. O'Malley, Helping Users Help Themselves. L.J. Bannon, Helping Users Help Each Other. C. Lewis, D.A. Norman, Designing for Error. L.J. Bannon, Computer-Mediated Communication. Part VII:The Context of Computing. J.S. Brown, From Cognitive to Social Ergonomics and Beyond.  Revealing how smart design is the new competitive frontier, this innovative book is a powerful primer on how--and why--some products satisfy customers while others only frustrate them.