Due at 11:59 pm on Wednesday, April 20, 2016, by uploading to Stellar and the project Wiki page for GR4.
Assignments for the evaluation will be sent once prototypes have been completed.
You must complete the self-assessment form before you hand in the assignment.

User Study Participation

Participate in the user study of graduate students. We recommend getting in contact with other graduate students during the in-class worktime or on Piazza.

Undergraduates must participate in two (2) user studies. Graduate students must participate in three (3).

Evaluating Prototypes

For this portion of the assignment, you will do heuristic evaluation on a computer prototype developed by your classmates.

You will receive your assignment on in this Google Spreadsheet. You should read the wiki page for the project you were assigned, which will give you instructions for running the prototype and background information about the project. This is not an anonymous evaluation, so feel free to contact the project group directly if you need more information than their wiki provides.

As soon as you receive your prototype assignment, try to run the prototype. You don't have to do your heuristic evaluation right away, but poke around a bit and make sure the prototype appears to work for you. If you have any difficulty getting a prototype to run or finding a suitable platform to run it, send email to the people who created it, and cc: 6.813-staff@mit.edu on your email. Do this trial run by Friday, April 15. We need to get logistical problems out of the way as early as possible.

Follow the heuristic evaluation procedure we discussed in class to evaluate the interface carefully. Make a numbered list of usability problems and successes you find. For each problem or positive comment, you should:

• describe the problem or positive feature, using screenshots;
• identify the relevant usability heuristics (from the guidelines we've discussed in class);
• estimate its severity (for problems, use cosmetic, minor, major, or catastrophic; for positive comments, just say good).

You aren't required to recommend solutions for the problems, but any ideas you have would no doubt be appreciated.

Be thorough. Cover every major part of the prototype with your analysis. You should have at least 15 useful comments (positive or negative) about the interface that you evaluate.

Be thoughtful and analytical. Remember to make use of all the usability heuristics.

Write your report in a readable style. The usability of your report to its recipients will matter in your grade. In particular, don't bury the problems you found in reams of free-flowing prose. Where possible, include screenshots to illustrate the problems you found. In general, make your report easy to read and understand.

What To Hand In

You must complete the self-assessment form before you hand in the assignment.

1. You must record whose user studies you participated in.

2. There are two places you have to submit your report: 1) Stellar as in other assignments, and additionally 2) the GR4 Wiki page of the project you are evaluating in a comment with attachment. Your report must be submitted in PDF format, not plain text or Microsoft Word. If your word processor can't generate PDF, there is free software for printing documents out to PDF.

3. Include a list of the people you discussed this assignment with, or explicitly say that you discussed the assignment with nobody. (you can put this at the top of your report). This is an individual assignment, so be aware of the course's collaboration policy.

Your report will be graded by the teaching staff, and will by read by the group whose project you evaluated.