HCI 440 Course Review
The following are stages for user-centered design. For each stage, a list of methods is provided. We practiced the starred methods in the class projects.
For the starred methods, you should know best practices (e.g. informed consent) and common strategies (e.g. think-aloud protocol for usability testing) for practicing them.
For stages and methods, you should be able to explan what aspects of UX goals (e.g. user satisfaction, efficiency, utility, learnability) that the stage or method addresses.
Requirements and use analysis
Also called user and task analysis. This stage involves learning about people, their goals and how they (currently) accomplish their goals.
- Contextualized interview*
- Competitive research
- Traditional interview
- Field observation
- Survey
- Participatory analysis
Methods for specifying user and task analysis
- Scenarios*
- Personas*
- Hierarchical task diagrams
- User/task matrices
- Requirement/Feature lists*
- Artifact-centered descriptions
Conceptual design
This stage involves choosing functionality and conceptually organizing it at the abstract level.
- Derived from user and problem analysis*
- Card sorting
- Sticky note organization
- Cooperative design (aka participatory design)
- Storyboarding
- Brainstorming
- Applying metaphors and users' mental models
Interaction design
- Paper and pencil prototyping*
- Understanding and selecting among interaction styles (direct manipulation versus command-based)
- Applying constraints from human behavior (e.g. memory, perception, motor skill)
- Visual grouping
- Page grouping
- Applying affordances
- Using helpful labels (text or icon)
Evaluation
- Usability testing*
- Use of guidelines such as Nielsen's heuristic evaluation
- Walkthroughs
- Card, Moran and Newell's Keystroke Level Model
We have discussed diverse approaches to categorizing evaluation methods. Knowing these approaches is helpful for explaining what UX goals a method evaluates.
Additional topics
These include additional information on theories of human performance and interaction, which were covered in weeks 6 and 7.