Before class Sept. 23:
Familiarize yourself with Nielsen's heuristics and with Instone's extension of them.
You will individually apply Nielsen's heuristics to an online resource.
Your deliverable for class on Tuesday will be a summary of your evaluation -- please hand in a copy as evidence that you did the assignment. We won't grade these.
During class on Sept 23:
Your group will gather to reconcile and consolidate your findings. If you don't work in the group you did your last assignment with, people who did the UC Berkeley website will work together.
Sample reports
None of these are perfect, but together they illustrate a range of options. Remember that the goal is to communicate clearly to your client and to developers about what you found and what needs to be done as a result. If you're doing this with your group from the last assignment, your group should pick a format to follow.
Example 1 Note how they report problems or "issues," describe each, note the heuristic(s) violated, and the severity.
Example 2 This is organized by heuristic, not issue or problem, but is detailed about each violation and what needs to be done. It gives pecific recommendations that the developers can work on. Vague and general evaluations are hard for the developers to translate to action; these comments are specific and actionable.
Example 3 This is organized by page, with a list of the violations noted on each page. Each violation is followed by the heuristic violated, in parentheses
Example 4 These people developed a detailed, customized list for each heuristic, operationalizing the heuristics for the kind of system they were evaluating. Then each is rate yes/no/not applicable, with room for comments.