Most Tuesdays in this class will be dedicated to reflecting on the lessons learned in the previous week through a group activity. Many of the group activities require you to prepare beforehand by reading a paper, evaluating an interface, or even simply thinking about a topic. In class, you will break into small groups and talk about what you learned. As a group, you will prepare a 1-page summary of your group's findings. The summary will include a list of the group members, all of whom will be credited equally for their participation. In addition, the professor will select several students at random to present the findings of their group. The group as a whole will be evaluated based on the performance of the group member.
Nov 19: Scope Evaluations
As part of your new job with Microsoft, you have been assigned to be an evaluator for a new application—the Scope. You must do two separate evaluations of this interface before you meet with your workgroup. Your workgroup will consolidate responses, use the responses to support or refute the designer’s claims about Scope, and suggest a reengineering strategy for the next iteration of Scope’s development.
Background. The Scope is a notification system developed by Microsoft researchers to help users stay aware of information, such as incoming email messages, calendar appointments, tasks, and general alerts. It uses a radar-like circular display to organize these items by category and urgency (most important items are in the center), various types of animation to introduce new items, and different types of icons to convey additional characteristics of the item. The application constantly resides in a corner of the desktop, providing an access point to more information about these notifications.
Before class
1. Learn more about Scope through this slideshow:
http://research.microsoft.com/adapt/scope/talk/avi02_talk_01_files/frame.htm
Ensure you look at slides 4-18 to understand the basic features, slides 26 & 27 to understand the icons, and the demo (try the tooltips) at http://research.microsoft.com/adapt/scope/talk/scope_geometries_01.html
2. Think like an ordinary user that keeps Scope running continuously while performing other tasks and complete this survey about the Scope.
3. Now, think like an expert and complete a heuristic evaluation (just like last week’s Tuesday activity) using this set of heuristics.
Bring your completed survey & heuristic evaluations to class for submission!
In Class
4. Come up with group consensus for a survey and heuristic response.
5. Associate the group response with claims the designers made about Scope (these will be provided in class)
6. Come up with re-engineering strategy. What three things should they change in the next iteration?
Nov 12: Heuristic Evaluation of
“BusMobile”
For this
activity you will use Nielsen’s heuristics (http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_list.html)
to evaluate the BusMobile (http://kettle.cs.berkeley.edu/UserStudies/bus.html)
application. In class on Tuesday, your groups will
perform a heuristic evaluation of BusMobile, producing a list of the usability
problems that your group uncovers. You
should bring screenshots of the BusMobile application to help in your
evaluation.
Before Class
Be familiar
with the list of heuristics from the link provided above (a printout may be
useful to bring to class). You also
need to understand the BusMobile application.
Read over the website, and pay attention to the claims the authors make
about what the BusMobile application does (printouts of the screenshots may be
helpful during the group evaluation.
In Class
Each group will
perform a heuristic evaluation of the BusMobile application. This may require developing scenarios with
your group members to fully understand how the system works. Each group will turn in a 1 page write-up
including a description of the usability problems uncovered from using the
heuristic approach.
Nov 5: Information and Interaction Design
This activity integrates the ideas we've discussed about information and
integration design, as well as
Read over the specific instructions and scenarios. To prepare for class, you will need to use Microsoft Excel to perform a simple statistical test. This will give you some practice for your projects, in which you will likely do similar testing.
Oct 29: Information Design Claims
This activity integrates the ideas we've discussed about rapid prototyping and information design, and also provides experience in selecting interface features to target during user testing. Use this activity for practice--you can apply a similar methodology to your projects during the Phase 2 write-up!
Read over the specific instructions and scenarios. To prepare for class, you'll have to develop a prototype for each scenario. Submit these sketches as well as the chart you develop in your group on Tuesday.
Oct 15: Squinting at Interfaces
To prepare for this Tuesday's activity, look for interfaces that do and don't pass the "squint test" as described in class and in the book. That is, when you look at the interface while squinting, you should be able to understand the structure and general functionality of the interface. After identifying several such interfaces, analyze their visual features, menu layouts, and graphical layouts. Identify reasons why the pages you identified succeed or fail at their intended tasks, using the Gestalt principles discussed in class. The World Wide Web is a great place to look for interfaces, but do not feel limited to only consider Web pages.
Generate a screen shot of two interfaces, one good and one bad, and bring printouts of them to class on Tuesday.
Oct 7: Prototyping
In class last week, we discussed the importance of rapid prototyping in the design of systems. In Tuesday's class, we will be developing a prototype for an image editor on a handheld computer. No pre-class preparation is necessary -- a handout of more complete instructions will be given out in class.
Designing for handhelds is difficult because of the limited screen space and interaction methods, so interfaces and guidelines for desktop computers do not necessarily apply. In class, each group will identify claims that they feel are most important for a handheld image editor, then develop a prototype that supports the claims they made. Selected groups will present and defend their designs at the end of class, and we will note how the different claims result in radically different designs.
Sep 24: AIMing for Better Design
In class last week, we introduced the concepts of activity, information, and interaction design. For Tuesday's class, develop a scenario for the use of instant messaging systems, then consider its impact for the AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and one other messaging system of your choosing (AIM+, ICQ, Everybuddy, Yahoo Messenger, or any other). For people who have not used them, the messengers are available for free on the Web, and information about them is available as well (including a lengthy discussion in the "Off Topic" CS Web forum).
You should be able to think of upside and downside claims that can be made for the following items within the categories of activity, information, and interaction design.
Activity design:
Information design:
Interaction design:
In class on Tuesday, we will break into groups and use our claims to identify the three most critical usability problems for AIM. During time at the end of class, we will compare the problems that each group identified and discuss similarities and differences.
Sep 17: Designing Real World Interfaces RWI Project Listings (with winners)
This week we have been looking at emerging paradigms for user interaction, including ubiquitous computing approaches for integrating digital information into the world around us. For this week's activity, you will read a short paper on the real-world interfaces project here at Virginia Tech and devise your own real-world interface. The interface should use the devices supported by the RWI toolkit: anything that can be plugged into an electrical outlet (lights, fans, clocks, etc), remote controls, motion sensors, and other X10 devices. The toolkit supports the toggling or dimming of power to electrical devices based on changes to information monitored by a computer or sensed by other X10 devices. Consider the examples in the paper and similar projects at UC Berkeley, CMU, and Calgary for inspiration.
Your writeup should include a specific information source that you would
want to monitor, a description of how real-world objects would reflect the
information, and a scenario that describes a situation where the RWI would be useful.
Be sure to discuss how various information states would be reflected by the
objects in an intuitive manner. If desired, include a visual representation of
your real world interface. Email your writeup in plain text or html format to
the TA, Jacob Somervell (jsomerve@cs.vt.edu) by
Due to the cancelled class on Thursday, this week's activity will be completed outside of class. At the end of class on Tuesday, we will have a few minutes to talk about a few of your writeups, but most of the class will be dedicated to lecture.
Sep 10: Vannevar Bush's Impact
In class this week we talked about emerging interaction paradigms and how they relate to HCI. For this Tuesday's activity, read Vannevar Bush's essay "As We May Think" (available here and elsewhere on the Web), and consider the impacts that it had on science. Specifically, I want you to think about how elements in the essay foreshadowed advances related to your project domain. Consider when and how scenarios and claims were supported, and when and how they broke down for examples used in the essay.
Sep 3: Home Page Scenarios and Claims
In class we introduced the concept of scenario-based usability engineering. Consider (and possibly design or redesign) your own personal Web pages, and think about some scenarios that illustrate ways in which you want people to interact with it. You may have a specific target audiences for your pages, or you may be trying to appeal to many different people. What claims emerged from the scenarios that you created? The claims should highlight tradeoffs that you made in creating these pages. What features of your pages support the claims that you made? Come to class with copies of key portions of your personal site along with your scenarios and at least three positive claims (pros) and three negative claims (cons). Be prepared to discuss the points described above with your group.