IN4MATX 131 Term Project                            

The aim of this term project is to evaluate the usability of a search interface of the UCI library website. The project should be carried out by pairs of two students, one being the "experimenter" and the other the "test user" or "subject". The result of the project is a written report that describes how the test user interacted with these interfaces to solve given tasks, as well as the interface design and information organization problems that you encountered thereby. The term papers are due by December 8 at 11:59pm at the latest (to be uploaded electronically in the ICS 104 dropbox). The estimated work time per person is one hour for the experiment, 2-3 hours for analyzing the interface, and less than a day for writing the report.

This project will be conducted in collaboration with the UCI libraries which also supplied the tasks. The library will be very eager to read your findings.

Tasks:  See the separate sheet of instructions for the experimenter that will be distributed in class. Experimenters should not share these instructions with the subjects beforehand.

How to proceed:

• You will need paper and a pen for the experimenter to take notes. If you have a voice recorder (e.g. cassette recorder, voice recording software on your computer) that can record for about an hour, this would also be useful.
• One student is the test user who should solve the given tasks alone.
• The other is the experimenter who notes down all important actions/comments of the user, specifically when the user has problems.
• This user should think aloud, i.e. explain permanently whatever s/he is currently doing and why, and whatever comes to his or her mind. A fictitious example would be: "Now I need to find the books by Peter Norvig. I look for a way to enter his name in a search field. However, I cannot find one. Let us browse through these pulldown-menus to figure out how this can be done...."
• When the user is done with all tasks, both partners should re-analyse the problems that the user encountered and document them with screenshots.
• If you have suggestions for improvements, also note them down (suggesting improvements is not very important though).
• Write a report of about 12 single-spaced pages (8 pages of text plus 4 pages of screendumps). It will be graded based on
  • the clarity of the description of what the user did and what problems s/he encountered
  • the thoughtfullness of your analysis of why these problems occurred
  • the thoughtfulness of your recommendations for improvement (less important)
• Upload your report electronically by Dec. 8 at 11:59pm the ICS 104 dropbox.

Some advice:

• Do not hesitate to speak out everything that comes to your mind. You do not have to be a brilliant user. This project is not about you, but about the interface. As many of you already experienced, even the brightest users encounter problems if the user interface is not well designed.
• I plan to forward your reports to the UCI library, so that they can decide on necessary improvements. Please therefore criticize whatever you find problematic with the interface, but do it politely (and do not blame the programmers :-). Do not include your student IDs in your report. If you tell me so, I will leave out your names when forwarding your report.
• Recording the user's comments on tape is useful for later analyzing usability problems. This is not required though.
• Your criticism and recommendations should be based on HCI and web design guidelines presented in class (but you are welcome to also present a few personal opinions that are not grounded in HCI theory).