Part 1 – Project Research and Problem Definition
This is a team project and the instructor will assign you to a team randomly.
Research the organization that owns the site. Include the mission of the organization, products and services, and target market. Answer the following questions:
- What are the goals of the site? What is the overall affordance of the site? Is this the right affordance?
- What is the problem that the organization is trying to solve?
- Who are the intended users and what do you think the organization would like them to accomplish using the site? Can you create a persona of the typical user?
Deliverables
- Create a Google slide deck that showcases research and findings. Include a title slide plus the following two slides (only):
- Goals, affordance, and problem being solved
- Typical user persona
- Prepare a 5 minute presentation to present your findings on the site to your classmates.
Part 2 – Usability Test & Goals
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 the usability test script from Canvas. The script is generic, so you are required to adapt to your situation. The team should use the same adapted script for all 5 tests below.
- Get five people (excluding MIS students) to participate in the usability test using the adapted usability test script and conduct a café usability test.
- Create a slide outlining the results of all 5 tests
- Document the process and notes and include the notes as well as the modified test script as an appendix in your submission.
- Conduct an heuristic evaluation of your assigned site using Nielsen and Molich’s 10 User Interface Design Heuristics:
- Download the “Heuristic Evaluation Template” from Canvas
- As a team you should fill out the template completely. If there is no information for a specific item please explain that it is n/a and why.
- Create 2 slides outlining the most urgent need from each category. (5 items per slide)
- Save as a .pdf and submit in the appendix of your presentation.
- Combine the results of the café usability test with the heuristic evaluation.
- Combine your analysis with your team member into a new integrated summary list.
- Create 1 slide showing these results.
- Identify the top 5 issues that should be addressed on the site.
- 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.
- Apply the following Norman’s concepts to explain the problems identified above. You should use all the concepts below at least once.
- 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)
- 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.
- Create 1 slide outlining one of the issues above of your choosing.
- 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.
Deliverables
- Google slide deck outlining the following:
- Slide 1: Group number, members, date, website
- Slide 2-3: Slides from previous presentation
- Slide 4: Café study test slide
- Slides 5-6: Heuristic evaluation slides
- Slides 7: Combined top 5 issues
- Slide 8: Pick one Norman issue and outline how it applied to your site on the slide.
- Complete all the google docs and include them in your submission
- Prepare a 10 minute presentation to present your findings on the site to your classmates.