Assigned: 7/03/03
Due: 7/10/03
In this individual assignment, you will assess somebody else’s design using heuristic evaluation. You will be assigned to review another group’s design. You should do this individually, rather than as a group. You should do a heuristic evaluation, and produce a report about the usability. This aspect of the assignment will both give you experience with work that might be done by a usability expert, as well as give the other group useful feedback on their design.
You will perform a heuristic evaluation (on your own) of their user interface using the materials they turned in for initial report and their design. Using their tasks, scenarios, UI design, you will apply Nielsen's heuristics (http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_list.html) (or Galitz’s) to the UIs. Read their report first and then examine their design. Your evaluation will use both the information in the written report and the paper prototype. You will produce a report showing the problems in the interface. For each problem, give the heuristic / guideline / principle violated, a description of problem and reasoning why you think this violates the heuristic, and –due to time constraints – also the severity (Use Nielsen’s severities).
For example:
1. [H-4 Consistency]
The interface used the string "Save" on the first screen for saving the user's file, but used the string "Write file" on the second screen. Users may be confused by this different terminology for the same function. Severity: 3 (Major usability problem, must be fixed – may cause users to make more errors; will make software harder to learn; users should get used to it)
.....
Your report will also summarize the number of
violations found in each of Nielsen’s/ Galitz’s ten heuristic categories, and
number of violations by severity, and give a total number of violations in the
entire interface.
Finally, your report should close with some overall recommendations you have for improving the user interface given what you read of their description.
Turn in 3 copies (one for me to keep, one to go to the group reviewed, and one to be returned to you) (or one copy plus a softcopy).
You will be graded on how complete your heuristic evaluation is in terms of coverage of the presented user interface design, clarity of your violation descriptions, and quality of your recommendations.