20-790: Human-Computer Interaction in eCommerce, Summer, 2004

Homework #4 Heuristic Evaluation of each other's sites

Start: Wed, July 28
Hand in: Wed, Aug 4

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 Neilsen's Ten Usability Heuristics. (There are lots of different lists of heuristics, but for this assignment, you must use only the ones that Nielsen lists.) Although multiple people are assigned to evaluate each group. you should do the evaluation separately. See the assignments of people to groups.

Perform a heuristic evaluation of the system you have been assigned, and write a report using UAR templates. 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 8 points that illustrate at least 4 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). Be sure each UAR lists which heuristic is violated or upheld, and why, and what you recommend be done about it.

You will be graded for HW4 on how well you evaluated the other group’s prototype, the quality of the feedback you are providing, how many problems and good things you found, and the extent to which you assign them to the correct heuristics.

Later, your group's grade for HW5 will be based in part on your response to your classmate’s Heuristic Analysis of your prototype (what you fixed based on what they found), so it is important to you to make sure your classmate gets a chance to evaluate your prototype.

The template for the UAR reports is on the web site at http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~bam/uicourse/20790summer04/UARTemplate20790.doc.

We will be grading from the hardcopy, so be sure to turn a hardcopy in on-time in class.


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