MUMMS Brief Information

Measuring the Usability of Multi-Media Systems

A user questionnaire is a standard way of getting end user reactions to a piece of software: such questionnaires are used quite widely in consumer research. In the field of computing there have been a number of notable end-user questionnaires going back to the 1980s. One such is the SUMI questionnaire which was developed by the Human Factors Research Group at University College, Cork. In the early 1990s, SUMI swept the board, so that by now every major multi-national IT company uses SUMI in some part of its enterprise, and many consultancies and SMEs in Europe and the United States also use it.

The time has come for a major re-think of end-user based questionnaires,and the MUMMS questionnaire is being developed in response to the rapidly changing patterns and technology of computing today. Multi-media computer products are establishing themselves as part of the market, and it is becoming necessary to develop ways in which these products can be assessed for quality of use by the end users themselves.

MUMMS is currently in development as version 2.0. Version 1 was widely used both in Ireland and in a number of research projects in Europe and the USA. As a result of version 1, a number of subscales of end user perceived quality were confirmed. These are:

Affect how much the product captures the user's emotional responses;
Control degree to which the user feels they, and not the product, are setting the pace;
Efficiency degree to which the user can achieve the goals of their interaction with the product;
Helpfulness extent to which the product seems to assist the user;
Learnability ease with which a user can get started and learn new features of the product.

Users of the old SUMI questionnaire will find these subscales familiar. We believe that those five subscales capture five essential ingredients of an end users' appreciation of the quality of a computer application; they have been confirmed in study after study and we were not surprised to see the same constructs emerging from the MUMMS data in version 1. However, as a result of Content Analysis of version 1 data, version 2 now has an emergent subscale that looks as if it relates to a concept we are at present tentatively calling Excitement. This is the extent to which end users feel that they are 'drawn into' the world of the multi-media application, and it seems to capture some of the fascination which the best multi-media apps exercise over their users.

Projects all over Europe are buying in to MUMMS ver 2.0, as at the current stage of development, users can take advantage of the developing status of version 2.0 and get the questionnaire on what is known as a data providers' agreement with the Human Factors Research Group. This deal is being brokered on mainland Europe through an entity known as the European Usability Support Centres network. Essentially, an organisation can use MUMMS and will get a free analysis of their data, so long as they allow the HFRG to use their data with all the necessary safeguards to preserve anonymity as part of the growing standardisation database of version 2.0. User who are associated with the HFRG on such agreements receive substantial benefits in their dealings with the HFRG as well as an introduction to the European Usability Support Centres network.

For more information about MUMMS, contact the Human Factors Research Group at the electronic mail addresses: bozena@ucc.ie , hfrg@ucc.ie or write to:

MUMMS Questionnaire,

Human Factors Research Group,

University College Cork

Ireland.

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