Informatics 131: Winter 2007: Assignment #2

Pick an example out of your design notebook (discussed first day of class)
Include a picture or sketch of the design example
Pick 3 principles from the text (8 golden rules) that are applicable to your example.
Also pick 3 guidelines from some set of guidelines in the text, or from Apple that are applicable to your example.
1. Guidelines don't necessarily have to be instantiations of the principles above.
For each guideline and each principle
1. Explain how it applies to the example.
2. What it reveals (positive or negative) about the design.
3. Suggest an improvement (if analysis was negative)
Provide a summary judgment of the example (positive or negative)

Pick a web site that you use frequently but doesn't allow you to do what you want to do well. Provide 1 screen snapshot.
Analyze it as above (Explain, what, suggest...) using these heuristics:
1. http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_list.html
Your analysis should address who the intended users of the site are, what the users want to achieve by using the site.
1. Decide if you are in the target audience.
2. Describe how the site is failing it's users and/or you, including, if applicable, characteristics of the users and their backgrounds that the site designers didn't understand or accommodate well.
3. Suggest improvements and justify them.
Your analysis should focus on usability issues rather than pure functionality; while the line is sometimes hard to draw (adding a search feature, for example, is increased functionality that also affects the usability of a site), don't try to solve the problems by making the system into something that it wasn't intended to be

Turn in your assignment before or during section on Tuesday February 6th, 2007.
Or electronically by 11:59pm on the same day by emailing Silvia. lindtner@ics.uci.edu