Human-Computer Interaction in eCommerce, Summer, 2001

Homeworks


Summary

Homework 1: Task & competitive analysis; Fri, June 29 - Fri, July 6. Group, 10% of grade.

Homework 2: Contextual Inquiry, Fri, July 6 - Fri, July 13. Group, 10% of grade.

Homework 3: Create a prototype Web site; Fri, July 13 - Fri, July 20. Group, 10% of grade.

Homework 4: Heuristic Evaluation of each other's sites; Fri, July 20 - Fri, July 27. Individual, 15% of grade.

Homework 5: Revise sites based on evaluations, User study of implementation of their site with at least 2 users, Final Report; Fri, July 27 - Wed, Aug 8. Group, 30% of grade.


Homework 1: User, Task & Competitive Analysis

Start: Friday June 29
Hand in: Friday, July 6

Group Project
Counts for 10% 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.


Homework 2: Contextual Inquiry

Start: Friday, July 6
Hand in: Friday, July 13

Homework 2 is in another file.


Homework 3: Create a Prototype Web Site

Start: Friday, July 13 
Hand in: Friday, July 20

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:


Homework 4: Heuristic Evaluation of each other's sites

Start: Friday, July 20
Hand in: Friday, July 27

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 Nielson UE textbook. Although multiple people are assigned to evaluate each group. you should do the evaluation separately. See the assignments of people to groups.

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).


Homework 5: Final Report

Start: Friday, July 27 
Hand in: Wednesday, August 8

Group Project
Counts for 30% of final grade.