Project Ideas

These are suggestions for projects that can be done without working in an organization. Think of your project as being hired as consultants to evaluate the Total User Experience for one of these sites.

Most any web site would be good for your project, so browse around or think of sites that you use. If you know the site is based in the Bay Area, you could contact them through their web site and see if you can't interest them in participating in your project. If you or your group would like to meet to discuss your project ideas, send me a note.

Online Grocery Shopping
Evaluate the web-based grocery shopping experience. There are at least two big sites (www.webvan.com and www.peapod.com) that you could look at. You could conduct contextual inquiry by going into people's kitchens and watching how they prepare a shopping list. It will be easy to find users, because anyone with a computer and internet connection can use the service. It's all online, so you don't need to actually be working with the WebVan or Peapod to do the evaluation.

Web-based Email
Evaluate web-based email systems like HotMail or Yahoo Mail as we have done in class. I can even point you to a proposed project outline and example reports from others who have evaluated earlier versions of HotMail (see http://www.dialogdesign.dk/cue.html). There are about ten reports of usability tests conducted on HotMail, but you could do Yahoo or another system.

Streaming Audio Video Players
There are at least four audio / video players out there: RealPlayer (www.real.com), Windows Media Player (www.microsoft.com), QuickTime from Apple (www.apple.com), and IBM VideoCharger (www.ibm.com/software/data/videocharger/downloads.html). You could do a comparative study of all four, starting with how to find them and installation, then usability studies.