HCI (CITS3201) Lab Class 1

Week 2 (4th March 2009)

Introduction to Usability and User Experience(UX)

Objectives

In this practical you will put into practice what you met in lectures 1 and 2 and the first chapter of your text book.  Specifically, the objective is to enable you to define usability and user experience goals and to transform these and other design principles into specific questions to help evaluate an interactive product such as a web page. The exercise below is based on the assignment in chapter one of your text book SRP http://www.id-book.com/index.php

 

Allocated Time

3-3:45pm Wednesday 4th March in CS Lab 2.01 (supervised)

OR anytime, anywhere with access via a web browser to the Internet

 

 

Lab Familairization

To get to know more about the CSSE computing environment, for example, changing your passwords etc, please refer to the lab guide at:

http://web.csse.uwa.edu.au/__data/page/63623/lab2007-manual.pdf

 

 

Task

Today’s lab can be performed alone or in small groups. You will just need access to a web browser connected to the Internet. Visit a UWA web page (or any other) which provides some sort of interactive facility. (Alternatively you can consider a software system or a handheld device such as a mobile phone or a camera. )  Briefly familiarize yourself with the material on the page and the way a user can interact with it and then evaluate it for answers to the following questions.

 

 

Usability and UX Questions

 

1.      From your first impressions, write down what first comes to mind as to what is good and bad about the way the web page works.

2.       Give a description of the user experience resulting from interacting with it.

3.       Based on the material in lectures 1 and 2 (or chapter 1) and any other related material, compile a set of usability and user experience goals that you think are most relevant in evaluating the site. Decide which are the most important ones and explain why.

4.       Translate each of your set of usability and user experience goals into two or three specific questions. Then use them to assess how well the page fares.

5.       Repeat 3 and 4 using the design principles from the chapter.

6.       Finally, discuss possible improvements to the interface based on the answers obtained for 3 and 4.

UWA CITS 3201  semester 1, 2009