Part B
Pick an instance of bad web design from your HCI Notebook. For this part of the assignment, you may pick relatively small, simple instances (like the recommendations page at Amazon.com or the “Status Update” widget on Facebook, not that either of these is necessarily a bad design), but don’t pick ones we discussed in class.
• Describe the relevant details of the web page(s) (if your web page wouldn’t be familiar to the typical UCI student, give enough background description to explain it), giving the title, URL and using screenshots as necessary.
• Explain the problem(s) you encountered, and explain how it relates to one of the usability goals or principles we have discussed. (Norman’s 7 Principles are near the end of Ch. 2 of DoET. Jakob Nielsen’s usability heuristics are available here (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site..)
• Suggest a way to remedy the problem, again relating your suggestion to the usability goal or principle that it addresses.
Post your example as a new public topic in the Assignment #1 Discussion (in addition to submitting Part A and Part C together on Canvas).
These should be relatively short – as a guideline, each submission should be about 300 words. Do not post anonymously or you will not receive a grade for this part of the assignment.
Note: there are enough usability issues on the web that we expect few if any duplicate responses. It is worth searching the already-posted examples to make sure that if you happen to be discussing the same site, you aren’t discussing the same usability issue.
Part C
For Part C, everyone will be analyzing the same web site, the UCI Registrar’s Schedule of Classes: http://websoc.reg.uci.edu/perl/WebSoc
Analyze the website as described in Part B, but in somewhat more detail. You should identify at least 3 usability problems that relate to different principles. As an upper limit, don’t spend more than an hour exploring the site and making notes, and don’t write more than two single-spaced pages of analysis (which again may span more pages than that as you include illustrations).
Your analysis should begin by addressing who the intended users of the site are, and what the users want to achieve by using the site. Then discuss your usability issues in terms of the audience you identified: how does the site fail to serve these users and their goals (including, if applicable, characteristics of the users and their backgrounds that the site designers didn’t understand or accommodate well), and what makes your suggested improvements better.
Your analysis should focus on usability issues rather than pure functionality; while the line is sometimes hard to draw, don’t try to solve the problems by making the system into something that it wasn’t intended to be.
Submit your Part B and C answer as an electronic document (PDF preferred, but other standard formats like .Docx or .Doc are OK) here on canvas. Please use the standard naming for your file
Sample Solution
