Heuristic Evaluation and Cognitive Walk Through, User Study Custom Paper

The goal of assignment 2 is to practice a usability study. This assignment can be done as an individual or group of two. In this task you need to perform the following steps on the given web sites. Your task is to assess the usability and user satisfaction of two websites and compare them. You will be inspecting the usability of each site using the proper design guidelines, and conducting a heuristic evaluation in order to explore the design and assess how successful it guides the targeted users to perform their tasks. You have to also perform a user study with three students and analyze the results. You will have to perform the following steps:
1. Select usability criteria and user experience criteria that is important for the domain and these websites.
2. Create a list of 5 tasks based on their importance for the needs of users of these sites.
3. Create a list of evaluation criteria and ratings for the above tasks.
4. Perform a Heuristic Evaluation of each web site and then compare these two sites with each other.
5. Perform a Cognitive Walk through based on the 6 tasks you have selected on each site and examine the design and usability guidelines and write a report.
6. Create a User Study case and create a background survey and an exit survey.
7. Select 3 people (could be students but not from the class) and ask them to fill out the background survey. (you have to collect their names and student ids)
8. Conduct user studies with those students.
9. Ask the students to fill the exit surveys (questionnaire).
10. Write a report about how those students where selected and about the execution of the user studies.
11. Tabulate the result of the use study.
12. Analyze and present the result with graphs or charts.
13. Make your case about the usability of the site based on the User Study, Heuristic Evaluation and Cognitive Walk through and provide your recommendation.
14. Add exit surveys and other relevant material as appendices. *** Before you conduct your evaluation you should have a good understanding of the domain, the objectives of site and the user profile. The web site is E-government: http://www.dubai.ae/ and http://www.gov.sg/

MARKING CRITERIA Deliverables and Marking Criteria: In your report you should include: • An executive summary (purpose of the report and a summary of results/recommendations). (3/40) • An introduction section describing the objectives of the study, the scope of the report, a high-level description of the two sites.(3/40) • A short analysis which might include: domain analysis, user profile, usability goals, usability requirements, and any design considerations or constraints you think should be enforced and list of tasks that are tested on both sites, (5/40) • Heuristic evaluation results: you should list in a table the issues (problems), the severity of the problems, the explanation (why it is a problem, and which design guideline(s) is violated, and your recommendation). Use screen-dumps (or paper mock-ups) to illustrate your points if necessary. (9/40) • Cognitive walkthrough analysis section, in this section you need to discuss, first the target users then the tasks and then the result of walk through of experts and their understanding of how well the interaction is designed. In this section you may show two or three examples of bad design decisions. Select 5 tasks and use the cognitive walkthrough to illustrate the weakness in the design. You may use paper mock-ups to propose alternative designs. (5/40) • User study with three students. Describe the students background, condition of the test, the questionnaire that was used (QUIS, HUPS, …). Show the statistical results, compare the results of both sites and make suggestion. Any comments by students or particular observations ( 9/40) • General usability section which includes general comments on the performance, use of appropriate functionality, navigation style, visual clarity, consistency, informative feedback and other usability criteria related to this site. (5/40) • Summary of the recommendation and conclusions. (4/40) Assume that the implementation of the system is not completed and that you are writing your report to the management of the company and the website development team. .