ITECH3001Evaluating a System User Experience Assignment

1. Assignment objectives

• Investigate the techniques for evaluating systems as described in the literature
• Design and conduct usability evaluation for a chosen system
• Analyse and interpret the data and results from the evaluation
• Report on the results and recommend for improvement of the evaluated system

2. Details of written components

2.1 Assignment

You will select one of the websites from the list of charities provided on Moodle. The assignment involves conducting a usability test on that website, interpreting the results and writing recommendations in the form of a report on any changes needed. Your report should be presented clearly enough so that it will be ready to be submitted to the charity.

Each of the charities listed have requested a usability evaluation of their website. The written component of the assignment must be based on your ACTUAL usability test on REAL users and should contain the following:

• An overview of the different approaches for assessing or testing usability with more details on the use of usability testing for evaluating systems or websites. Your overview should be based on the principles discussed in the lectures and the prescribed readings in the tutorials. It should also point out the pros and cons of the approaches you are reviewing and summarize your findings to justify your own approach.
• A brief description of the website selected for the usability evaluation. This should include the purpose (aim or mission) of the website, the target audience and the objectives of the organization with respect to their website as determined by the charity.
• For the usability test you must:
  • Describe how the usability testing was conducted, and rationale for the approach. You may use the usability instrument provided on Moodle. The description should include a justification of the number of users, selection of users, the instrument you used for your test (the survey questions), the task you designed for the test etc.
  • Recruit 5+ real users (not yourself) and table their demographic profiles.
  • Design one or two practical scenarios (tasks) and test their usability.
• A critical discussion of the method (good or useful aspects, difficult or poor aspects). After a methodological design based on the preparation above, this is the section to demonstrate your actual usability test skills and techniques. You should not just show the raw data which you’ve collected from the users, instead, you should summarize the raw data in statistics, interpret them and presented them in a meaningful and easy to understand way.
• A page to summarize and list your recommendations for changes to the website with supporting evidence. Think about what the key personnel (e.g. top executive) in the charity will want to know about how well their website is performing.

2.2 Requirements

It should be noted that this is not an exclusive list but suggestions of how you might approach the assignment. Your presentation must be brief and up to 15 A4 pages with 12pt font (including TOC and cover page). Do not break the page limit and do not use any appendix.

Your report must be written for scanning rather than for intensive reading. Use dot lists, numbered lists, tables and levelled headings to organize your ideas and content as demonstrated in this document. To support your arguments, use screenshots, graphs and actual data from your test and cite references across your document.

You also need to prepare a PowerPoint document up to 5 slides to summarize your assignment 2 work. This will be used for a 5 minutes mini presentation on week 11 tutorial and will be posted in week 11 tutorial forum. The mini presentation can also be done through a video recording. You may record your presentation, post it to YouTube and link it in your week 11 ppt posting.

Please use the attached marking guide as a guide to the work and content required for this assignment.