CS 4753 -- Human Factors in Software Development

Assignment 3: Assessing Your Design

Due December 9

Objectives

The objective of this assignment is to give you further practice in the detailed observation of problems have with human-computer interfaces. The practice is intended to give you experience in knowing what elements of behavior to look for and how to categorize this behavior so that you can draw conclusions from it about problems with particular user interface design.

Directions

Your basic task is to evaluate the interface you developed in assignment 2. The assignment will have 3 steps:
  1. Conduct usability evaluations of your interface by having 3 or 4 subjects interact with it in a manner similar to assignment 1. Again, the best way to do this is to give them a task to perform. Use the interface you developed using dtbuilder, Visual Basic, HyperCard, etc.

    One excellent way to judge your interface is to have subjects interact with it without having any introduction or tutorial. Make sure not to say anything other than a description of the task or goal. Also, run some sessions in which subjects have been briefed on the tool. Also get candid feedback from this. Use questionnaires and user satisfaction surveys to help out.

  2. Summarize and evaluate the comments and feedback you received from the subjects. Propose improvements to the interface to remedy its shortcomings.
  3. Write up your usability study in the usual HTML style (maximum 8 pages) including a short description of the user interface design you are testing, a summary of user reactions, your analysis and a categorization of the problems that occurred, and your suggested improvements.
You will be graded on the quality of your evaluation and your insight into the human behavior that you are observing.