Presented at the 2011 Usability Professionals Association Conference in Atlanta

1. Tool Time - Usability’s Next Top Model:
KEYSTROKE LEVEL
MODELING
Michael Rawlins, President, Connecticut UPA
Lori Hawkins, Sr. UX Consultant, Usability.org
Jeff Sauro, measuringusability.com
June, 2011

2. Why this topic
 We’re all striving towards more agility in
the development lifecycle...
 Shrinking budgets inspire innovative
solutions using new tools.
 Stakeholders need proof ‘earlier’ in the
lifecycle...
 KLM is an early indicator - providing
more precision in our baselining and
heuristics.
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3. Why explore this tool?
 Time to market – an increasing issue for
product development
 Cost of large samples no longer feasible
 Collaborative - even a Product Manager
can use this tool!
 Level-set - The traditional lab &
observation techniques are not dead...
Perhaps newly augmented by leaner
tools like KLM.

4. Proof...
“KLM is your
Canary in the
Coal mine...”
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5. Session Goals...
 What this tool accomplishes.
 KLM’s Significance in the development
lifecycle.
 Where best to apply...
 We’ll leave a lot of time for Q&A...
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6. What is KLM?
 Developed in 1983, KLM is a tool that
provides an estimation of keystrokes
associated to data input tasks.
 Best suited for modeling tasks less than
five minutes to complete
 Based primarily on modeling a sequence
of operations (K, P, B, H, M, T, W)
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7. Operations
Operator Characteristic Estimation
K key press and release keyboard
P point the mouse to an onscreen object 1.10 seconds
B button press or release 0.10 seconds
H hand from keyboard to mouse 0.40 seconds
M mental preparation 1.20 seconds
T(n) type a string of characters (n* K seconds)
W (t) user waiting for the system to respond
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27. A Business Case...
Booking a multi-city trip with Amtrak
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31. How to Apply…
 Select a working prototype
 Identify time-to-task goals from
stakeholders
 Identify main goals and sub-goals
 Determine happy path (and analyze)
 Investigate other paths...
 Share with stakeholders “are we
directionally correct...”

32. Pros…
 forget about the stop watch!
 quick and extensible
 share task with your stakeholders

33. Cons...
 spreadsheets can be intimating
 changing time estimates on operators
may require some level of research
 Mitigation: Composite KLM tool
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34. Reference Material…

35. You can contact us:
michael.rawlins@gmail.com
Questions… jeff@measuringusability.com
lori@usability.org

36. Thank you…