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I tried to find a standardized version of the system usability scale in German. Does one exist, and if yes, what is it.

There were a lot of differences between the translations I found.

possible sources:

The last link gives the following result:

  1. Ich denke, dass ich dieses System gerne häufig nutzen würde.
  2. Ich fand das System unnötig komplex.
  3. Ich denke, das System war einfach zu benutzen.
  4. Ich denke, ich würde die Hilfe eines Technikers benötigen, um das System benutzen zu können.
  5. Ich halte die verschiedenen Funktionen des Systems für gut integriert.
  6. Ich halte das System für zu inkonsistent.
  7. Ich kann mir vorstellen, dass die meisten Leute sehr schnell lernen würden, mit dem System umzugehen.
  8. Ich fand das System sehr mühsam zu benutzen.
  9. Ich fühlte mich bei der Nutzung des Systems sehr sicher.
  10. Ich musste viele Dinge lernen, bevor ich das System nutzen konnte.

This is a very literal translation of Brooke (1996), too literal in my view.

(Brooke, J. (1996). "SUS: a "quick and dirty" usability scale". In P. W. Jordan, B. Thomas, B. A. Weerdmeester, & A. L. McClelland. Usability Evaluation in Industry. London: Taylor and Francis. (http://hell.meiert.org/core/pdf/sus.pdf) )

So again is there a standardized version? What would be the appropriate likert scale labels?

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  • 1
    Can you link the english version as well, please? – giraff Aug 18 '11 at 8:34
  • Added a link to the english version. Thanks for pointing out, that it was missing! – Roland Studer Aug 22 '11 at 6:48
  • I started with creating an expert-based translation of SUS into German. You can follow the progress at isitjustme.de/2012/01/crowdsourcing-the-translation-of-sus – user13154 Mar 15 '12 at 22:14
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I just looked at http://isitjustme.de/2012/01/crowdsourcing-the-translation-of-sus/ users user13154 recommendation. It seems that the effort was picked up by SAP and there is a professionally translated and verified version at https://experience.sap.com/skillup/system-usability-scale-jetzt-auch-auf-deutsch/

  1. Ich denke, dass ich das System gerne häufig benutzen würde.
  2. Ich fand das System unnötig komplex.
  3. Ich fand das System einfach zu benutzen.
  4. Ich glaube, ich würde die Hilfe einer technisch versierten Person benötigen, um das System benutzen zu können.
  5. Ich fand, die verschiedenen Funktionen in diesem System waren gut integriert.
  6. Ich denke, das System enthielt zu viele Inkonsistenzen.
  7. Ich kann mir vorstellen, dass die meisten Menschen den Umgang mit diesem System sehr schnell lernen.
  8. Ich fand das System sehr umständlich zu nutzen.
  9. Ich fühlte mich bei der Benutzung des Systems sehr sicher.
  10. Ich musste eine Menge lernen, bevor ich anfangen konnte das System zu verwenden.
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I looked for one myself some time ago and couldn't find anything. The thing is that the SUS was released as a free “quick and dirty” scale and nobody “owns” it in the way the Human Factors Research Group at UCC controls the SUMI.

Perhaps more importantly, there are now quite some published data on the English-language version of the SUS and its characteristics that can help you plan and interpret usability tests with it (see references below). To my knowledge, nobody collected or published the same type of data for a German version. Short of that, there is really no telling how it compares to the English-language version and no strong basis to say that one translation is better than any other.

Depending on your needs and the amount of effort you are willing to put in this, you can do one of three things:

  1. Simply use a translation that feels good to you. It should certainly be enough to see some differences between designs or products, which is the most important way to interpret SUS ratings (absolute scores don't tell you much without a benchmark to compare them to).
  2. Go for the SUMI. It's a bit older and longer and isn't free but there is an official German translation and it will provide more information (it has several more specific subscales in addition to overall satisfaction/perceived usability). Wording of some of the items might sound awkward for some products, especially websites.
  3. Develop your own translation (and possibly publish it). The gold standard for this type of things is to have one or more experts translate the items from English to German and then other experts make a reverse translation to check if the meaning was not altered, revising the translations if needed. Then use this translation in a large user test (at least hundreds of participants and preferably different types of products as well), look at things like reliability and factor structure, compare them to publish data about the English-language version and check if some items have specific problems and need to be corrected or replaced.

Important papers about the English-language version of the SUS (beside the Brooke paper already mentioned):

  • Bangor, A., Kortum, P.T., & Miller, J.T. (2008). An empirical evaluation of the system usability scale. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 24 (6), 574-594.
  • Borsci, S., Federici, S., & Lauriola, M. (2009). On the dimensionality of the System Usability Scale: A test of alternative measurement models. Cognitive Processing, 10 (3), 193-197.
  • Lewis, J R & Sauro, J. (2009) The Factor Structure Of The System Usability Scale. Proceedings of the Human Computer Interaction International Conference (HCII 2009), San Diego CA, USA.
  • Sauro, J. & Lewis J.R. (2011) When Designing Usability Questionnaires, Does It Hurt to Be Positive?. Proceedings of the Conference in Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2011) Vancouver, BC, Canada.
  • Tullis, T.S., & Stetson, J.N. (2004). A Comparison of Questionnaires for Assessing Website Usability. Proceedings of UPA Conference.
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  • Thx for your great comment, didn't know about SUMI, though the website doesn't look too up to date...! I was already thinking, that I will need to make a validation of a translation myself. Anyone willing to help with that, please drop me an email (studer@puzzle.ch). – Roland Studer Aug 29 '11 at 6:50
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You can find the version that we use here: http://minds.coremedia.com/2013/09/18/sus-scale-an-improved-german-translation-questionnaire/

In the development of the German version of the scale, we analyzed and included the other sources mentioned in earlier posts and eliminated a problem with one item.

The scale was used with > 80 participants, without any problems reported.

Those are the items that we came up with:

  1. Ich denke, dass ich dieses System gerne regelmäßig nutzen würde.
  2. Ich fand das System unnötig komplex.
  3. Ich denke, das System war leicht zu benutzen.
  4. Ich denke, ich würde die Unterstützung einer fachkundigen Person benötigen, um das System benutzen zu können.
  5. Ich fand, die verschiedenen Funktionen des Systems waren gut integriert.
  6. Ich halte das System für zu inkonsistent.
  7. Ich glaube, dass die meisten Menschen sehr schnell lernen würden, mit dem System umzugehen.
  8. Ich fand das System sehr umständlich zu benutzen.
  9. Ich fühlte mich bei der Nutzung des Systems sehr sicher.
  10. Ich musste viele Dinge lernen, bevor ich mit dem System arbeiten konnte.
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