Part 1 – Project Research and Problem Definition
This is a team project (consisting of up to five students). The instructor will assign you to a team randomly. Your team will be assigned a Project Research website at random too.
Research the organization that your team’s assigned website was designed for and at a minimum, determine/identify the following:
- The mission of the organization
- The products and services offered/available on the website
- The organization’s target market(s).
Requirements
Answer the following questions:
- What are the goals of your assigned website? What is the overall affordance of the website? Is this the right affordance?
- What is the problem that the organization is trying to solve? Does this align with the goals of the website?
- Who are the intended users and what do you think the organization would like them to accomplish? How many typical users (personas) can you identify?
Deliverables
- Slide deck that showcases research and findings. Include a title slide plus the following two slides (three slides total):
- Goals, affordance, and problem the website is trying to solve.
- Typical users (minimum of three personas).
- Submit your PowerPoint slide deck to canvas.
Presentation
- Students may volunteer or will be selected at random at the beginning of class to present their findings to the class.
- The presentations will consist of 4-minute blocks with 3-minutes for teams to present their sites, followed by 1-minute for feedback.
Part 2 – Usability Test & Goals
Requirements
Now that you have completed the initial research and have a better understanding of what the organization is trying to do, evaluate the user experience.
- Conduct an observational usability test of your assigned site.
- Download and adapt this usability test script. The sample script is generic, so you are required to adapt it to your situation. Each team member must use the same adapted script for all tests.
- Get one person (user) per team member (excluding MIS (major and minor students) to participate in the usability test using the adapted usability test script. Each team member must separately conduct the test with their subject user and document their test.
- Document the process and notes and include these notes as well as the modified test script as an appendix in your submission. Each team member must include a separate set of their notes in the PowerPoint Appendix.
- Conduct a heuristic evaluation of your assigned site using Nielsen and Molich’s 10 User Interface Design Heuristics:
- Each team must work together to conduct their heuristic evaluation.
- Watch this video for additional insights on how to create your team’s heuristic evaluation(s)
- For each heuristic criteria, write a two or three sentence rating and explanation. Use the bullet format, or create an excel spreadsheet.
- Summarize the results of the heuristic evaluation(s) on a slide and place a copy of the entire heuristic evaluation in the appendix.
- Combine the results of the observational usability test with the heuristic evaluation.
- Combine your user analysis with your team member’s user analysis into a new integrated list. This list should show using square brackets who is responsible for which point and where it came from. For example: “The site does not help users recover from errors [Joe] [Heuristic].” It is okay to disagree with your team. If you disagree, identify those issues. As a guideline, we expect most teams will identify 7 plus or minus two issues.
- Include this “combined results” list in the PowerPoint Appendix
- List problems, not solutions. For example, “it takes a long time to find relevant information because it is not logically organized” is a problem vs. “the content should be better organized in menus” which is a solution.
- Incorporate a minimum of three findings from the “combined” results within the your PowerPoint Presentation.
- Combine your user analysis with your team member’s user analysis into a new integrated list. This list should show using square brackets who is responsible for which point and where it came from. For example: “The site does not help users recover from errors [Joe] [Heuristic].” It is okay to disagree with your team. If you disagree, identify those issues. As a guideline, we expect most teams will identify 7 plus or minus two issues.
- Apply the following Norman’s concepts to explain the problems identified in your Usability Tests & Heuristic Evaluation. You should use all the concepts below at least once in your PowerPoint slide deck.
- The different types and forms of errors (Ch. 5).
- Conflict among the designer’s and user’s conceptual and the system image (Ch. 1)
- Gulf of execution and evaluation (Ch. 2)
- Seven stages of action (Ch. 2)
- The three levels of processing (Ch. 2)
- Blame: The wrong thing, learned helplessness, oneself
- Note: As you work through the above, you will notice that one problem fits into multiple concepts. If that is the case, then identify the more general concept and explain how the smaller concept fits into it using the results as examples.
- You will be graded on how well you can take what you learned from the usability testing above and abstract to Norman’s concepts above.
- Team member evaluation: Please follow the instructions provided within the evaluation link listed under deliverables.
Deliverables
- PowerPoint slide deck: Include a title slide plus presentation limited to nine slides (ten slides total) highlighting all of above elements (Norman & Heuristics).
- Your Appendix must be included in the PowerPoint after the required presentation slides. Note: DO NOT include hyperlinks! There is no limit to the Appendix slides portion of the PowerPoint, utilize as many slides as you need to add your content.
- Submit your slide deck to canvas.
- Team member evaluation
Presentation
- The presentation order will be posted by the instructor; however, volunteers are welcome, and requests must be received by the end of class on 2/19. Every team will present
- Presentations will consist of 8-minute blocks with 5-minutes for teams to present their sites, followed by 3-minutes for feedback.