| Introduction | ||||
| 1 | Aug 28 Intro: concepts and methods What this course will cover |
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Pls fill out and email both of us this student info sheet
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| 2b | Sept 4 User-centered design, iterative development, and planningMethods overview |
Kuniavsky, Chs.3 & 4 Courage & Baxter Chapter 3 Ben Shneiderman and Catherine Plaisant, Designing the User Interface
: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction, New York;
Addison-Wesley, 2004 Usability basics from Usability.gov Usability.gov process map and planning guide Usability.net methods table Methods list Old, but still applicable Please spend a lot of time familiarizing yourself with common methods. |
Assn 1: Naive usability assessment due | |
| 3a | Sept 9 Visit from Kevin Lim, MIMS 08 USERS Users: their concept and roles; problematizing 'users' Multiple stakeholders: beyond end-users Problematics of multiple groups/needs Ethics of working with users |
Usability.gov overview learning about users Kuniavsky Ch. 6 & 7 Oudshoorn, Nelly, and Pinch, Trevor. "How Users and Non-Users Matter," p. 1-16. In: Oudshoorn and Pinch, eds. How Users Matter: the Co-Construction of Users and Technology. MIT Press, 2003. Hackos and Redish, Ch 2, Thinking about Users, Ch 3, Thinking about Tasks, Ch 4, Thinking about the Users' Environment Skim these -- useful resources for ethics of working with users: * Ethical Principles
of Psychologists and Code of Conduct 2002; see especially sections
on Privacy and Confidentiality.
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slides | |
| Methods | ||||
| 3b | Sept 11 LAB-BASED USABILITY TESTING and experimental design |
Most critical: Rubin, Jeffrey, Handbook of Usability Testing: How to Plan, Design, and Conduct Effective Tests. Wiley, 1994 (Rubin) Specific readings Chapter 2. Chapter 3, Chapter 5, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 10 (This book is worth buying) Kuniavsky, Ch. 10 Optional: Babbie, Earl R. (2001) The Practice of Social Research, 9th ed., Wadsworth. Chapter 5: Conceptualization, operationalization, and measurement (or equivalent chapter from another social research methods text). Robert Opaluch, "Usability Metrics". In Ratner, Julie, ed. Human Factors and Web Development, 2nd ed. Lawrence Erlbaum, 2003. p. 101-144. Optional, but recommended
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| 4a | Sept 16 USABILITY TESTING, CONT. Recruiting users Non-lab based usability testing Mobile (moved to 9/18) Remote Experience sampling (moved to 9/25) |
Recruiting Users Kuniavsky, ch 6, to p 117 (on recruiting users) (added 9/15) Sample usability testing materials Remote usabilitySusan Dray and David Siegel, Remote Possibilities: International Usability Testing at a Distance, Interactions, Mar.-Apr. 2004 Bolt | Peters Remote Testing Methodology Outline nitty-gritty of what they do for clients; not quite a how-to for researchers, but excellent outline of out to proceed. Remote Online Usability Testing: Why, How, and When to Use It by Dabney Gough and Holly Phillips IBM, Experience remote usability testing, Part 1
Tools to check out if you have the time/need
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remote testing slides | |
| 4b | Sept 18 Developing evaluation criteria through competitive analysis and expert inspection Includes heuristics |
Mobile usability (moved from 9/16)
Read at least one of the following:
Optional helpful tips: 10 usability tips & tricks for testing mobile applications Competitive/competitor analysis: (a simple but powerful method) Kuniavsky, ch 14 Some examples -- note that these range from a simple chart to a lengthy report. For your projects, you're more likely to do a chart: |
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| 5a | Sept. 23 Heuristics |
Discussion of usability testing exercise Heuristics (a classic method, and Nielsen's heuristics are something everyone knows and refers to, whether they use them or not): Muller, Matheson, Page, and Gallup, Participatory Heuristic Evaluation, Interactions, Sep.-Oct., 1998 Nielsen, Jakob. How to conduct a heuristic evaluationand Severity Ratings for Usability Problems Nielsen's 10 Usability Heuristics The classics; everyone knows these, and many still use them. Here's Instone's piece on how to apply them to the web -- again, oldie but goodie. Seven usability guidelines for websites on mobile devices An example of heuristics for a special situation; in this case, for websites on mobile phones. We're not saying these are the best; just good examples. First principles, AskTog International standards for HCI and usability Optional, but recommended |
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| 5b | Sept 25 Interviews |
Kuniavsky, ch 6, p. 117-127 as an overview Robert S. Weiss, Learning from Strangers - The Art and Method of Qualitative Interview Studies, New York: The Free Press, 1994 |
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| Sept 30 | Interviewing, cont. | |||
| 6b | Oct. 2 Other ways of collecting data from people Diary studies Experience sampling Probes |
Interviews and Focus Groups Krueger, Richard A., Focus Groups, 2nd ed. Sage, 1994; "Asking questions in a focus group." pp. 53-69 Useful in other situtations, not just in focus groups. Rosenbaum, et. al., Focus Groups in HCI: Wealth of Information or Waste of Resources, CHI 2002 Gaver, B., Dunne, T., and Pacenti, E. 1999. Design: Cultural probes. interactions 6, 1 (Jan. 1999), 21-29. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/291224.291235 Experience sampling Sunny Consolvo, Miriam Walker Using the Experience Sampling Method to Evaluate Ubicomp Applications Pervasive Computing April-June 2003 (Vol. 2, No. 2) pp. 24-31 Diary Studies Kuniavsky, pp. 369-385 Arbitron Diary Study Interesting to see how they do a paper diary and why. For radio ratings. Includes a copy of their form. Carter, S. and Mankoff, J. 2005. When participants do the capturing: the role of media in diary studies. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Portland, Oregon, USA, April 02 - 07, 2005). CHI '05. ACM, New York, NY, 899-908. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1054972.1055098 Useful for their discussion of using media other than paper. Optional, but recommended
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interviewing assn | |
| 7a | Oct 7 Understanding context through observation
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Blomberg, J., Burrell, M., Guest, G. An ethnographic approach to design. In Jacko J. A., Sears A. (eds.). The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook: Fundamentals, Evolving Technologies and Emerging Applications. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.: Mahwah, New Jersey, 2003. David R. Millen. Rapid ethnography: time deepening strategies for HCI field research. Conference proceedings on Designing interactive systems : processes, practices, methods, and techniques. ACM, 2000. Hugh Beyer and Karen Holtzblatt, Contextual Design, San Francisco;
Morgan-Kaufman, 1998 Highly recommended:
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| 7b | Oct 9 Observation/ethnography continued Qualitative data analysis |
In-class exercise with the data from your diary study (updated 10/7) .Come prepared to play with your data! |
diary study reflection due in class |
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| 8a | Oct 14 Qualitative data analysis continued |
Working with interview data. TO BRING TO CLASS
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Interview assn due |
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| 8b | Oct 16 Final projects |
Continue discussion of qualitative data analysis Project update and class discussion about research problem-solving |
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| 9a | Oct 21 Sampling issues and measurement |
Any thorough text on sampling and survey sampling will do; here's an online source: Statistics: Power from Data from Statistics Canada. Read the entire chapter on Sampling Methods that starts here. These concepts underlie much of data collection for a variety of purposes. Look at:http://www.pollingreport.com/wh08.htm -- summary of polls for this year's US presidential election. Note especially those that have qualifiers after the data:
revised 10/13/08 |
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| 9b | Oct 23
Intro to concepts and issues of surveys |
Take the Pew internet typology survey THEN look at the survey report and questionnaire and data -- we'll use as examples in class. Kuniavsky, ch 11 Schneiderman, Section 4.4 Dillman,Don A. (2000) Mail
and Internet Surveys: the Tailored Design Method, 2nd ed. Wiley. chs.
2-3; 5. The rest of the book is recommended. Web-based surveys: Dillman, Don, and Dennis K. Bokwer. The web questionnaire challenge to survey methodologists. Take the Pew internet typology survey THEN look at thesurvey report and questionnaire and data -- we'll use as examples in class. Useful resources -- sources for questions and examples of how to present data:
http://www.pewinternet.org They often reproduce their questionnaires -- a source of pre-tested questions, if they ask questions close to what you need (e.g., demographics, internet use/experience). Their reports are good at presenting data statistically and graphically and analyzing it. http://www.digitalcenter.org/downloads/DigitalFutureReport-Year4-2004.pdf UCLA Digital Futures Project -- more recent report not available online. Again, useful example, and possible source of questions. Surveymonkey.com and zoomerang.com. Popular online survey services. Many allow some free use that may be enough for your projects. Optional, but recommended Dillman,Don A. and Leah Melani Christian, Survey Mode as a Source of Instability in Responses across Surveys, Field Methods, February 2005 revised 10/13/08 |
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| 10a | Oct 28 Survey design and analysis continued |
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| 10b | Oct 30 survey reporting
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| 11a | Nov 4 Representing quantitative data |
Election day Tufte, Edward. Visualisation of Quantitative Information, Ch 4Ð6. Skim Ch 6. Kass, Gary. Creating Good Charts: General Principles of Graphic Display. Optional, but recommended |
slides | |
| Reporting and general topics | ||||
| 11b | Nov 6 Presenting findings and recommendations POSTPONED TO NOV 13 |
Rashmi Sinha, Persona Development for Information-rich Domains, CHI 2003 Pruitt, John and Grudin, Jonathan. Personas: Practice and Theory. 2002.Kentaro Go and John M. Carroll, The Blind Men and the Elephant: Views of Scenario-Based System Design, Interactions, Nov.-Dec. 2004 Cooper, A. (1999). The inmates are running the asylum. Indianapolis: Sams. ch 11: Designing for people. What is a scenario? from Information & Design. Use cases from usability.gov and from Wikipedia |
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| 12a | Nov 11 VETERAN'S DAY
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No class today |
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| 12b | Nov 13 Qualitative data analysis and presentation POSTPONED FROM NOV 6 |
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| 13a | Nov 18 Reporting strategies
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Kuniavsky, ch 17 AskTog, 2001: How to Deliver a Report Without Getting Lynched Jarrrett, Caroline. Better Reports: How to Communicate the Results of Usability Testing Common Industry Format report format (see about CIF). Some examples: from Dialog Design |
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| 13b | Nov 20 (tentative) Universal usability with guest speaker |
Aaron Marcus, Universal, ubiquitous, user-interface design for the disabled and elderly, Interactions, Mar.-Apr. 2003 Schneiderman, Ben. Universal Usability. CACM 43:5 200. p. 84- 91. Browse the universalusability.org site and the W3C web accessibility initiative sites W3C introduction to web acccessibility Jacob Neilsen, International Web Usability Testing; Offshore Usability Recommended: Evers, Vanessa. Cross-cultural applicability of user evaluation methods: a case study amongst Japanese, North-American, English and Dutch users, CHI '02 |
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| 14a | Nov 25 Careers in research |
Guest speaker tbd (tenative) | ||
| 14b | Nov 27 |
THANKSGIVING |
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| 15a | Dec 2 Project presentations |
Project presentations | ||
| 15b | Dec 4 |
Project presentations |
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| 16a | Dec 9 |
Project presentations |
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| Final project write-ups due Monday, Dec. 15 -- early submissions welcome. | ||||