HCI 460

• Reasons why products and systems are hard to use

  Rubin and Chisnell present a list of five reasons (pp. 6-12). Here is a brief summary of their reasons.

• Principles for User-Centered Design (UCD)

  These principles help designers and developers overcome the obstacles for creating usable products and systems.

• Usability objectives: what we are evaluating for...

  Many lists exist. Here is Rubin and Chisnell's list.

  We will standardize on this list.

• Different categories of evaluation methods.

  There are many different ways to describe and categorize evaluation methods. Here is one set of categories that Nielsen and Mack describe. They use it to motivate usability inspection methods.

Also see Lewis and Rieman's online text for additional descriptions of these methods. Hollingsed and Novick provide a review.

• Heuristic evaluation
• Cognitive walkthrough

In class, we will apply these methods to a simple unit conversion application (as time permits).

At the end of this week, send me an email message with the following information:

• Your name
• 2 or 3 apps from my selected list that you are interested in reviewing
• Meeting preference: 1 (prefer in-person meetings) to 5 (prefer or require remote meetings/interactions)
• Location information, including time zone
• Other comments or preferences for forming project teams

Sending this information confirms that you are attending this class. Also submit an introduction on D2L.