1. Lectures
Watch the week 10 lecture videos.
2. Reading
Choose 1-2 of the videos or articles from the reading list this week. Enter your reading reflection (250 word max) into the week 10 entry of the design notebook. Put your full name in bracket after the reading reflection paragraph. More details are available under Deliverable 1.c.
3. Interview 1 users to evaluate hi-fi prototype
Last chance to get high-level feedback from someone on the design of your hi-fi prototype being it goes into formal evaluation!
As a team, find a user---someone you know from outside of this class, or another student in CS449/649 who is not in your team and not in your buddy team---to interview. The interviews, from this point on, focus on hi-fi prototype evaluation. For this week, share your Figma prototype. Your prototype should be interactive (i.e., the user should be able to interact with the prototype by clicking on various interface components). During the interview, ask the users for some general feedback on the design, functionality and usability of your app. Now is the chance to spot any confusion that users might have, and correct for them in your design revisions. Note that for prototype evaluation interviews, with the user's permission, you can opt to take audio and screen recording (i.e., the camera needs to be on the screen, not anywhere else) of the user interacting with the prototype; these recordings should not contain any identifying information (e.g., names, faces). You can transcribe audio recordings, if you wish. Notes, images, screen recordings and audio recordings/transcriptions collected (again, without identifying information) should be kept for a minimum of 1 year on a password-protected computer, data server and/or cloud service. Add a section to the design notebook to capture a summary of your findings.
Make sure you obtain their verbal consent responses, and store these responses in a spreadsheet in a password-protected computer, data server or cloud service; the TAs and instructors might ask to see this spreadsheet at a later time. Keep your raw interview data private and viewable to your team only; DO NOT put the raw data (notes and images) in the design notebook. In the design notebook, you just have to summarize your findings from the interviews. Make sure that the data is anonymized and stored in a password-protected computer, data server or cloud service. In the raw data or any report summarizing the data, interviewees should be referred to by their code names (e.g., P1, P16) instead of their real names.
An important note: your interviewees must be adult (age 19+). Our ethics protocol does NOT allow you to interview children. Note that the definition of minor varies by province. To be safe, interview someone who is 19+. You should also stay away from interviewing students/employees in K-12 schools and hospital staff (e.g., doctor, nurses), because doing so would involve the school board's and the hospital's ethics board. If you were to interview an employee of a company/organization about work-related things, you will also need permission from their manager before conducting the interviews with the employees.
4. Prepare for High-Fidelity Prototype Evaluation
Include in the design notebook a writeup about the following preparation.
(1) Write down 3 high-level, scenario-based tasks. Explain why you chose to evaluate these tasks.
(2) Plan for heuristic evaluation. Select at least 5 heuristics from Nielson that you want the evaluator to focus on. Note that heuristic evaluation can be done asynchronously—you will provide the evaluator with a link to your high-fidelity prototype, a list of tasks to do (without providing any explicit instructions on how to do them), and a worksheet (on which you will mark the heuristics you want the evaluator to focus on).
(3) Plan for cognitive walkthrough. Write down the action sequence for each of the high-level tasks. Write down the instructions you will give to the evaluators.
(4) Recruit evaluators. You will perform the actual hi-fidelity evaluation next week (i.e., week 11). As a team, you need 4 evaluators in total, 2 for heuristic evaluation and 2 for cognitive walkthrough. For heuristic evaluation, the evaluators should be students in CS449/649 who are not in your team/buddy team. For cognitive walkthrough, the evaluators can be people you live with (i.e., in-person evaluation), or family, friends, target users, or other students whom you do not live with (i.e., remote evaluation); these evaluators should NOT have seen your hi-fi prototype (i.e., they shouldn't be people with whom you have already done a prototype evaluation interview). If the evaluator is not a student in this class, have him/her sign a consent form.
5. Mock Evaluation with Buddy Team
Do 1 mock heuristic evaluation and 1 mock cognitive walkthrough, each with a different person from the buddy team. In the design notebook, report your evaluation findings and any improvement to your evaluation procedure. See instructions on how to share your figma prototypes with your evaluators.
6. Prepare for Challenge Report #4 Presentation
The fourth challenge report presentation is next Wednesday (July 14). Teams should be presenting the content from challenge report #4. If you are presenting, prepare a 5-10 minute presentation, and include a link to your slidedeck (10 slides at most) on the #presentations channel by midnight the day before the presentation. Two people from each team should present. In the challenge report presentations, be specific. For example, in describing how you went about testing assumptions, don't just say that you did interviews. Be more specific and talk about the types of questions that help to break/verify your assumptions. Give concrete examples whenever you can. Make the presentation interesting, informative, and something that other students can benefit learning from.
If you are not presenting, you need to sign up (via Calendly) to attend one of the presentations. You are expected to participate in the discussions, e.g., ask questions and provide suggestions (see Deliverable 2.b). We do monitor attendance. During discussion, keep yourself mute but turn on the webcam if you are comfortable with it. It is much more fun/natural for presenters to be talking to an audience, instead of a bunch of black screens. Also, in Zoom, there is a "raise hand" and "lower hand" functionality under "Reactions", which you can use during discussion to indicate that you have questions to ask or suggestions to give.
Due Friday (July 16)
● Design Notebook Entry (1.c, 3.b, 3.d) - the entry should capture your attendance to team meeting, your individual reflection, the documentation of your design activities (including preparation for hi-fidelity prototype evaluation and mock evaluation with buddy team).
● User Interviews (3.a): Prototype Evaluation - complete the writeup by adding a section to your design notebook entry.