Human-Computer Interaction in eCommerce, Summer, 2002

Homeworks


Summary

Homework 1: User & competitive analysis; Contextual Inquiry; Wed, June 26 - Wed, July 3. Group, 5% of grade.

Homework 2: Contextual Design, Wed, July 3 - Fri, July 12. Group, 15% of grade.

Homework 3: Create a prototype Web site; Fri, July 12 - Fri, July 19. Group, 10% of grade.

Homework 4: Heuristic Evaluation of each other's sites; Fri, July 19 - Fri, July 26. Individual, 15% of grade.

Homework 5: Revise sites based on evaluations, User study of implementation of site with at least one user, Write Final Report; Fri, July 26 - Wed, Aug 7. Group, 30% of grade.


Homework 1: User & Competitive Analysis

Start: Wednesday, June 26
Hand in: Wednesday, July 3

Group Project
Counts for 5% of final grade

Each group will be creating a simulated electronic commerce web site throughout the term for this course.

Reports should be authored using Microsoft Word or HTML. If you use HTML, please create a zip file including the source and all images. Turn in one report for each group.

Please turn in a hardcopy printout of the report, and email a copy to the TA.


Homework 2: Contextual Inquiry

Start: Wednesday, July 3
Hand in: Friday, July 12

Homework 2 is in another file.


Homework 3: Create a Prototype Web Site

Start: Friday, July 12 
Hand in: Friday, July 19

Group Project
Counts for 10% of final grade.

Create a prototype of your web site containing at least 10 pages. It is OK to use pretend data and no database.

You can author your website using Microsoft Frontpage or other authoring tool, or using raw HTML. Pictures and images for your site can be "sloppily" drawn by hand or scanned in. You can put your pages up on the server for the class, or your own machine if you have a web server.

Turn in:

Please turn in a hardcopy printout of the report, and email a copy to the TA.


Homework 4: Heuristic Evaluation of each other's sites

Start: Friday, July 19
Hand in: Friday, July 26

Individual Project
Counts for 15% of final grade.

Each person in the class will be assigned to evaluate the site of a different a group. Individually, you should write a heuristic evaluation of the site using principles from the lecture and readings, especially Neilsen's Ten Usability Heuristics. Although multiple people are assigned to evaluate each group. you should do the evaluation separately. See the assignments of people to groups. That page also contains the URLs for each group's page.

For the system you have been assigned perform a heuristic evaluation. Your report should discuss both problems and things done well. You should include pictures of the original site that illustrate each of your points. Each point should be annotated with the particular guidelines that are being violated or being followed. If violated, you might suggest a fix. You should try to come up at least 10 points that illustrate at least 5 different guidelines. I am looking for insight, subtlety and depth (thus saying "the system doesn't have good color choices because it doesn't use color" is pretty trivial and won't count for much).

Please turn in a hardcopy printout of the report, and email a copy to the TA, and also email a copy to the group you evaluated.


Homework 5: Final Report

Start: Friday, July 26
Hand in: Wednesday, Aug 7

Group Project
Counts for 30% of final grade.

Please turn in a hardcopy printout of the report, and email a copy to the TA.