6.893 User Interface Design & Implementation
Fall 2003
PS3: Heuristic Evaluation of Prototypes
Due 12:30 pm, Wed October 22, by email
In this individual assignment,
you will do heuristic evaluation on two computer prototypes developed
by your classmates.
You will receive your two assignments by email. The email will
include the GR3 report for each project, which will give you
instructions for running the prototype and background information about
the project. This is not an anonymous evaluation, so feel free to
contact a project group directly if you need more information than you
were given.
As soon as you receive your prototype
assignments, try to download and run both prototypes. You
don't have to do your heuristic evaluation right away, but poke around
a bit and make sure the prototypes appear to work. If you have
any difficulty getting a prototype to run or finding a suitable
platform to run it, send email to the people who created it, and cc:
Rob and Jaime on your email. Do
this trial run by Friday, October 17. We need to get
logistical problems out of the way as early as possible, since
everybody else is going to be working on heuristic evaluations too.
Follow the heuristic evaluation procedure to evaluate both interfaces
carefully. Make a list of usability problems you find. For
each problem, you
should:
- describe the problem
- identify the usability heuristic it violates (from Nielsen's
Ten Usability Heuristics, or any other guidelines we've discussed
in class)
- explain why the heuristic is violated
- estimate the severity of the problem (cosmetic, minor, major, or
catastrophic)
You aren't required to recommend solutions, but any ideas you have
would no doubt be appreciated.
What to Hand In
By 12:30 pm on Wednesday,
October 22, you should hand in two
reports, one for each interface you evaluated. Each report should
be a separate Postscript or PDF file,
so that we can easily distribute them to the appropriate groups.
Write your reports in a readable style. The usability of your
report to its recipients will matter in your grade. In
particular, don't bury the problems you found in reams of free-flowing
prose. Highlight the problems with a clear structure, e.g. Problem, Heuristic Violated, etc. Where
possible, include screenshots with relevant locations marked to
illustrate the problems you found. In general, make your report easy to
read and understand.
Your reports wil be graded by us. We will also forward copies of
each report (without our grading feedback) to the appropriate group.
Send your reports by email to both Rob
Miller (rcm@mit.edu) and Jaime Teevan (teevan@ai.mit.edu).