Week 11 To-Do’s
Readings
Each student must individually select at least one starred item and at least one other item from this week’s reading list to read/watch. More details are available on the Information page under Deliverable 1c.
Conduct a heuristic evaluation
You will plan and conduct a heuristic evaluation on your high-fidelity prototype.
Plan
You will provide the evaluator with “Heuristic Evaluation Worksheet” (find a link to the GDoc template on the resources page). The worksheet should have:
- Background: a brief introduction of your product, some background of your problem and related domain, and a list of your personas with their roles and some key characteristics.
- Link to your high-fidelity prototype
- Tasks: the user goals that your two user flows are designed to achieve and some basic information to get them started with your prototype and how to complete the tasks.
Once you’ve prepared your worksheet, make two copies and share one with each of your evaluators with edit privileges. Note that the heuristic evaluation can be done asynchronously.
Conduct
Recruit 2 evaluators among students enrolled in CS449/649 who are not on your team. Provide them with your worksheet and give them “due date” to complete their evaluation. They will tell you when the completed worksheet is done.
As rule of thumb, evaluators should try to find 5 - 10 issues of varying severity.
Design Document
Add the following to your design document:
- Paste the background and task instructions you added to the worksheet.
- Paste a link to completed evaluator worksheets.
- Write a 125-250 word discussion about the evaluation results and any actionable ideas you have to improve your design.
Prepare for Final Project Presentation
You will be delivering a live presentation during the next class. It should be 5 minutes (no longer than 7 minutes) with 4 content slides (title and “thank you” slides do not count). Here’s a suggested presentation structure and timing:
- Slide 1: Introduce Your Problem (about 30 seconds). What problem is your app trying to solve?
- Slide 2: Brief Demo (about 2 minutes). Show a video of your high-fidelity prototype in action. As the video is playing, explain the different features and functionality of your app, and the purpose they serve. You can reuse part of your demo video, as you see fit.
- Slide 3: Surprises or Learned Lessons (about 2 minutes). What are 2 most surprising things you learned during the design process? These can be your assumptions about the users, the problem, or the design that ended up being false.
- Slide 4: Potential Impact (about 30 seconds). In the ideal world, what do you hope the impact of your app would be?
You must submit a PDF of your presentation slides before 1:30 PM on the day of the presentation.
More details and submission instructions are available on the grading page under Deliverable 3a.
Team meeting and design document
Conduct this week’s team meeting or discussion in and/or out of class. Update your design document with the meeting minutes and the outcomes of this week’s activities. More details are available on the Information page under Deliverable 2a.
Think about drafting your research report
You should start to work on your final report now, since the workload at the end of term increases. For example, you could start to polish the results in your design document and your mid-term report, write an outline of the report, reflect on the past design stages and received feedback, and prepare figures or illustrations. Medium will be used for hosting the blog posts that form your final report. More details are available on the Grading page under Deliverable 3c.
(CS649 only) Think about drafting your research proposal
Grad students should also start their research proposal by thinking of topics and finding related papers. More details here: Research Proposal.
Due next week
- Week 11 reading reflections (1c)
- Design document section #10 (2a)
- Project presentation (3a) slides (Tue Dec 6, before 1:30 PM)
- Project presentation (3a) (Tue Dec 6, live in class)